The Cuckoo
by MissBates
Summary: Sequel to The Kelpie and set in the same AU. When Wilson refuses to get his cancer treated, Cuddy enlists House's help, but neither she nor Wilson are quite prepared for the radical steps that House takes. Warning: Incomprehensible unless you've read The Kelpie!
1. Departure and Arrival

**Warning**: This fic is set in my Kelpie AU. **If you haven't read _The Kelpie_, this fic will be incomprehensible**. For those of you who have read _The Kelpie_, but can't recall any details, I've posted a short summary below. (If you haven't read _The Kelpie_ even the summary will be incomprehensible - trust me on this!)

**Further Warning**: H/Cu shippers: it's still too early for Endgame. Those two have a long way to go.

******Summary**: When Wilson opts not to have his cancer treated, Cuddy enlists House aka Pete's help. Pete's methods, however, are as drastic as ever and in the end everyone pays heavily.**  
**

I'm very grateful to my beta, **menolly_au,** who agreed to read and correct this work at short notice, and promptly worked her way through copious amounts of prose at a tremendous speed and with enormous enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the mistakes are all mine while the characters aren't. I'm aiming for weekly posts. I know that's long to wait between chapters, but both my beta and I have lives, and I haven't quite completed the story yet.

* * *

**Summary of _The Kelpie_**

_The Kelpie_ diverges from canon at the end of S7.

House is so severely injured in the car crash that his leg has to be amputated. In the subsequent trial he is acquitted of the charge of attempted manslaughter because Wilson testifies that he tried to commit suicide, but he loses his medical licence. He is further depressed by the knowledge that Rachel is crippled as an indirect consequence of the car crash: Cuddy's house survives the crash, but collapses a few months later during a hurricane. Wanting to forget his past, he persuades Wilson and Foreman to perform an experimental brain surgery on him that wipes his memory clean. After the procedure they leave him in Britain equipped with the papers of a British citizen named Peter Barnes. Henceforth he lives an uneventful life as a jack-of-all-trades, aware that he can't be 'Pete', but with no clue as to his origins and no lead to indicate where he should search.

Three years later Cuddy runs into Pete while attending a medical conference in Bristol. Confused because he doesn't seem to know her but fascinated by the similarity to House, she seeks his proximity until she's sure who he is. Wilson, now a lonely alcoholic detoxing in Mayfield, persuades her to keep House's identity from his alter ego, but he can't stop Cuddy from repeatedly visiting Pete in England. Meanwhile Pete, realising that he has more in common with Cuddy than with his supposed countrymen, decides to go to the States to research his past. To Wilson and Cuddy's dismay he turns up in Philadelphia, where Cuddy now lives, and proceeds to turn their lives upside down. Wilson, sensing disaster, tries to persuade Cuddy to keep away from Pete, but to no avail.

Pete stalks Cuddy to a PPTH gala that Cuddy and Wilson attend, and seeing pictures of his former self, finally connects the dots. In the ensuing chaos both Wilson and Pete relapse, Wilson with a bang and Pete with a whimper. The situation is further complicated when Lucas Douglas, allegedly acting to protect Cuddy from her domestic abuser, gives the Trenton police a tip that results in Pete being arrested for scoring drugs. Between them Cuddy and Nolan bribe Pete into getting admitted to Mayfield to keep him from imprisonment. Once there, Pete explores his past by reading Nolan's old case notes and renews his friendship with Wilson. Conversely, Pete and Cuddy's relationship turns sour when he realises that he nearly killed her and maimed her daughter.

With Nolan's support, Pete manages to get acquitted of the charges against him and to resume his old identity. He has several job offers in the States, but ultimately he decides to return to England where he is offered a job as diagnostician at Guy's Hospital. _The Kelpie_ ends with Pete inviting Rachel and Cuddy to join Wilson on a visit to London.

* * *

**The Cuckoo**

**Christmas 2015**

_At first everything goes smoothly. Wilson, Cuddy and Rachel arrive ridiculously early at the airport, a good thing considering the throngs milling around trying to make a run for warmer climes. Cuddy has everything under control, from the check-in (organising special permission to take Rachel's wheelchair right up to the airplane) through jumping the queues at each of the three security checks. Nevertheless, getting Rachel and her wheelchair through security is no fun whatsoever; does security think Cuddy looks like a suicide bomber prepared to blow up her child in order to make an obscure political point?_

_Wilson had done a few flights with House after the infarction and had soon decided that unpleasant as road trips with House were, they were infinitely preferable to being cooped up with him in a floating cigar box that had no escape route whatsoever. Unlike House, Rachel doesn't insist on pissing off ground staff or flight attendants before they've as much as taken off, and unlike House, she doesn't need to prove her independence by refusing all help – she's fine with him carrying her the last few steps on board and into her seat. But that's where positive comparisons between Rachel and House end. Rachel is as easily bored as House, but with fewer means of distraction. (He can't really suggest to Cuddy that Rachel should pop a Vicodin and then chase it down with a few shots of bourbon to keep her quiet.) The on-flight selection of children's movies is limited, and Rachel has seen them all already. She's tired and cranky, but can't find a comfortable sleeping position. _

_And then she needs the restroom. No problem, Wilson says, he'll carry her, and Cuddy can take over once they get there. And it is no problem – until they get there and Rachel sees the small cubicle that she and Cuddy are supposed to squeeze themselves into so that Cuddy can catheterise her._

"_I can't – not in there!" she whines, refusing to enter. She'll wait till they reach London, she says. Cuddy tries to point out that they won't arrive for another eight hours, but it's no use. Rachel, who has never flown distances that take longer than two hours, can't fathom what that means and remains obdurate. So they carry her back to her seat._

"_She has claustrophobia," Cuddy says. That's not really surprising, considering that she was buried under that ceiling for almost an hour before the EMT managed to get her out. "It's been a lot better lately, but I guess it isn't good enough for airplane restrooms yet." Well, that kinda sucks._

_As the next hour progresses, Rachel squirms and fidgets, whines and moans, but resolutely insists that all this is in no way connected to the increasing pressure in her bladder. Finally Cuddy grabs her and drags her to the bathroom again. Rachel loses it completely in the cubicle, resulting in the disaster that Cuddy was hoping to avoid. _

_Luckily she has got a change of clothes in her hand luggage. The cabin crew doesn't want them to use the galley to get Rachel changed 'for hygienic reasons', but Cuddy has got them beaten in a trice, giving them her best I'm-head-administrator-so-don't-mess-with-me _shpiel_. _

_Four hours later they're headed for the bathroom again, Cuddy giving Rachel pep talks, promising rewards, etc. The people seated next to the facility give them dire looks, which Cuddy ignores. Wilson finds this somewhat harder, especially when Rachel throws a tantrum right outside the bathroom. Cuddy finally plonks her on the ground and sits down beside her._

_She blows the hair out of her face, takes a deep breath and says, "The galley it is, then."_

_The attendant is so dumb as to start a discussion on whether the galley is an appropriate place to catheterise a paraplegic …._

_When they reach Heathrow Airport, House isn't waiting for them despite his assurance that he'll pick them up, and his cell goes to voicemail at once. Cuddy suggests a cab, but Wilson, mindful of the advice in his travel guide – _Don't dream of trying to drive around London in a car during rush hour!_ – and noting that their hotel is situated on the line which services the airport, makes a strong case for taking the Underground. _

"_It'll be a lot faster," he says. Since everyone is pretty much frazzled and sleep-deprived, this argument carries some weight._

"_Why aren't we staying with Pete?" Rachel asks._

"_His apartment in London is too small," Cuddy explains._

"_He says he lives in a Cupboard Over The Stairs," Wilson says jokingly. But even if House had a place the size of Buckingham Palace, he'd probably prefer them somewhere else._

_Wilson's travel guide _doesn't_ mention that you shouldn't dream of embarking on the Underground with a wheelchair during rush hour either, and although it remarks on the 'quaint, somewhat antiquated escalators' at the Underground station near their hotel, it fails to warn about the flight of six steps between platform and escalator. Cuddy is not amused, not when they have three suitcases, a wheelchair, and a child to get up the stairs and can leave neither baggage nor child unattended. It's a bit like that brain teaser where you have to get a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across the river in a rowing boat that'll only take one at a time, without either of the two left back on the shore being gobbled up by the other. Wilson, after juggling Rachel and one of the suitcases up the stairs, manages to keep the girl amused with the brain teaser while Cuddy lugs up the last suitcase and the wheelchair. Needless to say, Cuddy isn't particularly interested in hearing how one saves the cabbage from getting eaten by the goat._

"_The wolf eats the boatman, the goat pokes a hole in the boat with its horns, the cabbage floats down the river, and I murder Pete. Problem solved!" she mutters as they ride up the escalator. _

_When they get to the hotel Cuddy collapses on her bed, saying she is not to be disturbed for the next twelve hours. "I hate the Underground and I never want to see the inside of an airplane again," she says._

"_Me neither," Rachel concurs cheerfully. "Mom, I need the bathroom!"_

* * *

**Four months later**

"Passengers for British Airways flight BA 0142 to London Heathrow are requested to proceed to the departure area."

Wilson stood up and picked up his cabin baggage, giving Cuddy a lopsided smile. "Well, thanks for bringing me," he said.

Cuddy rose too. "No problem," she said. "Have a good time. And … give Pete my love."

Her hesitation didn't escape Wilson's notice. "Sure you don't want to come?"

Cuddy gave a little embarrassed laugh. "Not this time. Maybe next time." At Wilson's quizzical look she added, "I can't just up and go at a moment's notice."

"I gave you six weeks' notice," Wilson pointed out. "You were there every few weeks last year."

"Are you interrogating me?" Cuddy countered.

"No, no," Wilson hastened to reassure her. "I … I don't want House to feel abandoned. It's been difficult for him, adjusting to his new – old – identity. He's taking a few days off to travel with me, but then he's hiring his new team, and I'm pretty sure he could use both our help."

Cuddy sighed, tugging at a stray lock of hair. "It's not all that easy. I can't ask Julia to take Rachel anymore, and I don't have anyone else with who I can leave her for more than a night at a time."

"I thought you and Julia were okay again?" Wilson said.

"We are," Cuddy admitted, "but we have a sort of understanding that I won't use her as a babysitter in order to keep in contact with Pete. She accepts that she can't stop me from seeing him, but she doesn't want to enable me either. My mom and I are not on speaking terms, though." She didn't seem particularly cut up about her mother's embargo.

Wilson wasn't really surprised to hear that. If anything, he'd been surprised at how quickly Cuddy's family had swung around from 'Stay out of our lives!' to 'Your well-being is our primary concern, no matter what you do.' In his own family concerns had never been voiced openly; instead they had festered forever under the surface, poisoning all interaction. Ultimately, he'd felt better avoiding his family than trying to survive hours of unspoken recriminations and diffuse resentments. But if Cuddy's administrative style was anything to go by, then she'd been brought up to deal with raised voices and tempers that flared quickly only to die down again just as rapidly.

"So bring Rachel along. There are still tons of sights to be seen in and around London," Wilson suggested.

"Bring her along? Take her out of school, drag her on a long journey that's ruinous for everyone's nerves, then try to get her in and around the sights, and all that for what? I'm fine staying here while you keep in touch and do your 'friend' thing with him."

He examined her expression as closely as politeness would allow, but she seemed to mean it. It wasn't that he blamed her for not wanting to take Rachel to England again. Enlightened though he was from the years spent trying to make House's life as normal as possible, he hadn't quite anticipated the difficulties involved in travelling with a child like Rachel.

"And you and House?" Wilson probed.

Cuddy gave him the kind of smile that acknowledged his concern, but effectively told him not to pry. "We're fine," she said. She peered deliberately at the departure screen where a green light was flashing next to the BA flight to Heathrow. "Shouldn't you be going?"

Noting the deflection, Wilson supposed he should let it rest. And he would have, if there were the slightest likelihood of House answering his questions. But there wasn't. He put a sympathetic hand on Cuddy's arm. "These things take time, Cuddy. And House has never been quick to change the status quo or adjust to new circumstances. Believing that a week's visit at Christmas would straighten things out between you was very optimistic, don't you think?"

"Wilson, you were there with me at Christmas. This has got nothing to do with 'change' or 'straightening things out'. And if he's adjusting to anything, it isn't to _me_."

Wilson frowned. The subtext was in some dialect that he didn't comprehend; he'd need the annotated version to understand it.

Cuddy rolled her eyes at his perplexed expression. "The Christmas do at Guy's Hospital? The psychiatrist?"

Wilson racked his memory and came up with a face and the vague memory of a name: Gail Something-or-other. Farnhill? "You mean the one who came to our table? She and House barely talked. They sniped at each other."

"Wilson, you're blind as a bat."

"Did I miss something?" Wilson said, politely incredulous.

"He was smitten," Cuddy said baldly.


	2. Pizza and Probability

**A/N:** A big thanks to everyone who followed or favourited this story. My thanks also to the reviewers whom I can't thank personally because they don't have accounts. I'm grateful for those reviews too.

* * *

**Christmas 2015**

"_Any plans for this evening?" Cuddy asks casually._

_House shrugs and looks at Wilson, who stares at Cuddy trying to read the subtext. Does she want him to mind Rachel while she gets some time alone with House to sort things out with him? She and House are engaged in a stand-off that he can't quite decipher. It's like the complicated dance they'd engaged in for years at PPTH, only without the spark and the banter. _That_ had been the tango; this is the minuet. Not that he minds: he is all for them not being too friendly as long as they don't slip back into that miserable unease that reigned in the weeks following the disaster at the PPTH anniversary gala. So, while he doesn't mind babysitting Rachel _per se_, clearing obstacles out of Cuddy's path isn't on his agenda._

"_I thought we could stay in and watch a movie with Rachel," he says diplomatically._

"_Ellie, Baz, and John want to come to London to meet up with us," Cuddy explains with a side-glance at House. "I thought we could have dinner with them somewhere."_

_House is gazing at Cuddy with the look of quizzical admiration that he reserves for occasions when people best him. "And they know you are here because?" he asks._

"_Because I friended Baz on Facebook ages ago, and I informed him that I was coming to London," Cuddy says, her expression daring him to object._

_House pretends to be outraged. "That's cyber-stalking!"_

"_Feel free to get a restraining order," Cuddy counters._

_House changes tack. "Who says I want to spend the evening with them?" he asks._

_Cuddy leans back, smiling evilly. "That's okay; you don't have to come along. You can spend the evening with Rachel instead, while I introduce Wilson to your friends and gossip with them." The words _'about you'_ hang unspoken in the air._

_House folds. "Okay, but I get to choose the grub house."_

"_Sure."_

_Wilson deems it is safe to walk between the enemy lines now that fire has ceased. "Who are Ellie, John and Bass?"_

"_Baz," House corrects absently. "My former boss."_

"_You – have a former boss who wants to eat with you?"_

"_I have former bosses who …," House leers._

"_Pete!" Cuddy warns, glancing over at Rachel, who is luckily occupied in playing a run-and-jump game that Wilson installed for her on his iPad._

_Wilson breathes an inner sigh of relief when they arrive at the venue House has chosen, an Italian restaurant not too far from their hotel. Given House's reluctance to mingle his past life with his present one, there was a good chance that he'd choose some awful tourist trap just to ensure that all conversation would be nipped in the bud. Or, conversely, that he'd opt for an upbeat establishment that would have Cuddy tearing out her hair within half an hour, stressed out at failing to get Rachel to behave in a socially acceptable manner. Rachel regards the food on her plate as legitimate material for art projects and considers silverware a waste of time. _

"_In India," she informed Wilson haughtily on occasion, "_everyone_ eats with their fingers. Rajesh said so!"_

_Cuddy vacillates between considering it a 'phase' that will pass and bribing Rachel into superficial compliance with the strictures of Western society. House, needless to say, eggs Rachel on whenever he can._

_House's English friends (Wilson still has to get his mind around the concept of House having more than one friend at a time) are half an hour late, which gives rise to an animated discussion on rush hour around London in general and the number of construction sites on the M4 in particular, neither of which Wilson is particularly familiar with. Nevertheless, the conversation gives him ample opportunity to survey the odd bunch House associates with in Bristol. They are as ill assorted as his notorious Princeton poker pals, probably because they are chosen according to the same random mechanisms that House applied back then. _And_ they are as scrupulously uninterested in House's personal life as the poker group was: House's explanation that Wilson is a former colleague is accepted without any question or comment. The only one who displays a flash of interest is the short teacher called Ellie, who risks a sideway glance at House. No one asks the obvious question, which is where and when they were colleagues. Nor does anyone look the least bit surprised or bemused by Rachel's disability, so Cuddy must have primed them well._

_They make it to the main course before House's cell phone rings. He doesn't bother to excuse himself or leave the table; his only concession to manners is tipping back his chair as though to indicate that he'd get up if it weren't such a bother. _

"_Yeah?" he says. Then he listens for a few moments. "Negative? What did you perform the ELISA on? … No, it's not obvious – it could also have been a semen sample."_

_The others at the table stare at him. Wilson flushes; Cuddy smiles her administrator smile._

"_We're really lucky with the weather – I was told that London can be very rainy around Christmas," she says to no one in particular. It has the desired effect of drawing the three Brits' attention away from House for the moment – references to the weather apparently oblige everyone within hearing to voice an opinion._

_Unfortunately House sabotages Cuddy's efforts before John can complete his rambling exegesis on the effects of global warming on Britain's climate. (According to John Britain is headed for the next Ice Age.) He effectively kills the conversation by yelling into the phone, "Biopsy the spleen! … You have? Great! Phone again when you have the results." He slips his phone back into his jacket muttering, "Morons!", and attacks his food with renewed vigour._

_The phone rings again. House throws down his fork and huffs into the speaker. He frowns at whatever the person at the other end is saying. _

"_I read somewhere that the Brunel got an award for its superior cuisine," Cuddy says to Baz, plucking Rachel's fingers out of the salad bowl._

_Baz tears his gaze away from House in order to respond to her. "Yes, we're trying out traditional British recipes, and the response has been amazing."_

_Ellie chimes in on cue. "Their roast lamb is amazing. It melts on the tongue."_

"_Would you give me your recipe, please?" Cuddy asks Baz sweetly. If Wilson didn't know that she hates red meat, he'd be fooled. She listens to Baz enumerating ingredients for all the world as though she intended to make the dish one day, both of them markedly ignoring House. John, however, stares at House with mouth agape while Ellie eyes him with the enthusiastic doubtfulness of a robin who suspects that the nestling it lavished extensive care on is in actuality a young cuckoo. _

_It suddenly strikes Wilson that House's Bristol friends have never experienced him working, _really_ working. They've never seen him on a roll, doing his 'diagnostic' thing; it is possible that they've never as much as witnessed him take a phone call in all the years they've known him._

_House holds the phone against his chest and says to the table at large, "What looks like malaria, but isn't malaria?"_

"_Is this a game?" John asks._

_House rolls his eyes. "No, it's not, you …"_

"_Lyme disease," Cuddy says quickly._

_House nods his approval of the suggestion even as he shoots it down. "That was our first thought, but the serological test was negative, no EM, no memory of tick bites, no improvement under doxycycline."_

"_What are the symptoms?" Wilson asks, drawn in despite himself._

_House puts the phone on speaker and props it up against his plate. "The symptoms are fever, flushes, headache, nausea. Did I miss anything?" This last is directed at the phone._

_There is silence, then the person at the other end says carefully, "Enlarged liver. Are you discussing our patient's symptoms with non-hospital personnel?"_

"_No," House says airily. "I'm in a restaurant loo, talking to myself. It helps my process."_

"_Then what's the noise in the background?"_

"_Muzac. I hate what these places do with their hygienic facilities. Time was when there was interesting graffiti on the walls and you could spend a happy hour or two reading the crudest imaginable jokes, but nowadays everything is a sterile white and the music drives you away before you're had the time to wipe your arse. Can we continue?"_

"_Dry cough," the phone says reluctantly. "White blood count slightly elevated."_

"_Was the patient abroad?" Cuddy asks._

_House gives her his 'duh' look. "_Ob_-viously, otherwise we wouldn't have been talking malaria."_

"_There _is_ someone with you," the phone squawks._

"_What's Pete doing?" Rachel asks._

"_Diagnosing," Cuddy answers her. "Hush, otherwise he won't be able to hear what the doctor at the other end is saying."_

_House clears a space in front of him by the simple expedient of pushing everything, including Ellie and Wilson's plates, to the side and then leans forward to pluck a pen from John's shirt pocket. John's surprised squawk at being robbed dies on his lips when he sees what House does next, namely jot down the symptoms on the white linen tablecloth in front of him._

"_I don't think that'll come out in the wash," he says._

"_No, death tends to stick," House agrees absently._

"_Could be leishmaniasis," Wilson says._

"_Geoff," House says to the phone, "what do you say to that?"_

"_Serology negative, nothing in the splenic aspirate. The spleen isn't enlarged. Dr House, you can't do this!"_

"_What did that fellow call him?" John says._

"_He's a doctor?" Ellie asks. She doesn't seem all that surprised. _

_Wilson looks helplessly at Cuddy. What does House want them to say, what would he prefer this crowd not to know?_

_Cuddy, twirling pasta around her fork, says carefully, "He's a diagnostician."_

"_Oh," John says, pushing his food around his plate. "I didn't know you could, you know, just do that. I mean, without medical training."_

_Cuddy smiles her end-of-conversation smile and says curtly, "He's got medical training."_

_John is patently oblivious to the vibes in the room. "Then why didn't he – ouch!" Ellie must have kicked him under the table. John looks up, finally registering Wilson and Cuddy's discomfort, and once more says, "Oh!"_

_Wilson leans forward to talk into the phone. "Could be an atypical presentation. Patients with compromised immune systems often have false negative tests and no enlargement of the spleen. Any history of cancer?"_

"_No, but who are you?" There is a hint of desperation in Geoff's voice._

"_God, these kids are irritating!" House remarks. "He's an oncologist, obviously; that's why he thinks of cancer first when the immune system's off. But that's not the only cause for abnormal immune responses." He puffs up his cheeks and lets the air out with a plop. "Test our patient for HIV."_

_There is a hushed babble at the other end, then a female voice says, "We can't. We haven't got his consent."_

"_Then _get_ his consent."_

"_He won't give it: he's a bishop."_

_House leans back and lifts his eyes to the ceiling, enunciating slowly, "I agree that his belief in God could be a sign that he has no grey matter. An HIV test, however, requires blood, not brain matter, and _that_ even idiots have in abundance. Test. Him. For. HIV!"_

_There is further muttering, then the woman says, "Dr House, you may not be aware of the political ramifications of this case. Our patient is aiming to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. If news of an HIV test leaked …"_

"_Does he want to die?"_

"_He wants to make sure he has a career to go back to once this is over, which he won't if tales of Hep C and HIV tests get around," the woman says. "He doesn't even want it known that he's been hospitalised: if health issues become public, his, uh, extracurricular activities will be looked into. And that would be the end of his bishopric."_

"_If he doesn't do the test, he'll be exchanging his mitre for a halo. And no matter how much these men of God talk about wanting to exchange their crosses for crowns, when push comes to a shove they'll cling to the certainty that this life offers them. Have you still got some blood?"_

"_Yes, but …"_

"_Then do the test. That's an order!"_

_Silence. (At the table all conversation ceased long ago.) "I'm afraid we can't really do a test to which the patient has not consented."_

"_Do it or you're fired!"_

_The man, Geoff, is back on the line. "Dr House, I'm afraid you can't dismiss us; we're not your employees. We're merely delegated from our respective departments for the duration of the case."_

"_You don't have a team of your own?" Cuddy asks, shocked._

"_Nope," House replies, his brow furrowed in concentration. He speaks into the phone. "You're saying you can do as you please, and I can't fire you."_

_Geoff clears his throat. "Well, I wouldn't put it that way, but …"_

"_Send me the liver scans," House orders, a gleam in his eyes that bodes ill. (The unfortunate Geoff, however, can't see that, and even if he could, it is doubtful whether he is capable of interpreting the augurs correctly.) "You _can_ do that, can't you?" _

_Without waiting for an answer he severs the connection, then leans down and pulls his laptop out of his backpack. "Get me the password for this place's wi-fi!" he barks at John. _

_Ellie gets up instead, returning a few moments later with a slip of paper that she dumps wordlessly in front of House._

"_Why haven't you got a team?" Cuddy asks._

_House ignores her; he is staring at the screen, his forehead furrowed in concentration, one elbow propped on the table with the fingers of that hand scratching his brow._

"_The hospital administration thinks it would be more economical for him to have doctors assigned from other departments as and when needed than for him to have staff of his own," Wilson answers for House._

_Cuddy gives him a 'you're kidding!' look. "That'll never work," she says to House._

"_Saves me the bother of conducting interviews," House mutters, staring at the screen._

_Wilson and Cuddy exchange glances. Some things never change._

"_Liver doesn't look good," Cuddy remarks, coming around the table to peer over House's shoulder._

"_This isn't a state-the-obvious contest," House says testily._

"_Could be either of them, leishmaniasis or malaria," Cuddy says. "The scans are inconclusive."_

_House leans back and tips his head to look up at her. "Are you even a doctor?" he gripes. "Come up with something we can test for or shut up!" _

"_It could be hepatitis," Wilson suggests._

"_Or your bog-standard liver cirrhosis caused by years of alcohol abuse." House's eyes widen. "Now _that's_ something we can work with," he says with a burst of manic energy, smacking his lips and waggling his fingers over the keyboard. "Clickety-click-click, off to my favourite site … Then we upload it – there. … Add a few hashtags – there. … Save, and post. Voilà!" He leans back, grinning happily._

_Then he picks the phone up from the table, scrolls down his contacts and dials, one eye on his screen all the while. "Geoff," he says amicably, "you really need to be more careful with patient confidentiality. I've found your scans on Tumblr, tagged #bishop and #alcohol cirrhosis. … Oh, wow, they just got 'liked' by someone! I wonder whether they've been re-blogged yet."_

_Wilson shakes his head in dismay. Cuddy throws up her hands and returns to her seat next to Rachel. "I hope his job contract includes insurance cover for HIPAA violations," she says._

_House holds the phone away from his ear, a wise move in view of the pandemonium issuing from the speaker. After it dies down he says, "Geoff, are you suggesting that _I_ posted those pictures?" It is a pity that Geoff can't see that puppy-dog look of innocence. "Why would I do that? … _You_ were the one who sent patient scans to a public hotspot where anyone with minimal IT skills can access them. If you feel like explaining your indiscretion to Wesley, then go ahead and send him a link!" _

_He grins smugly at whatever Geoff is saying. Then he says with fake sincerity, "I'm _so_ sorry to hear that you'd prefer not to work for me again. But until we've diagnosed this patient, you'll have to stick it out. I suggest both of us do what we're best suited for: _you_ go get that HIV test, while _I_ figure out who cracked the security code for this hotspot and make them take the scans off Tumblr again. … Great!"_

_He throws the phone down and pulls his plate back towards himself again, attacking the cold remains with gusto._

_Wilson wordlessly rearranges his and Ellie's plates so that they, too, can continue their meal._

"_You know," Baz says conversationally to Cuddy and Wilson, "I used to believe that he behaved so badly at the Brunel because he was taking advantage of our friendship. Now I see that he was well-behaved – by his standards."_

* * *

**April 2016**

"I want food," House said. "Pizza. What do you want, Wilson?"

"Can't it wait?" They'd had a humongous breakfast – the full British works, House had boasted – merely two hours ago.

"I'm hungry now!"

"Fine, maybe those salt-and-vinegar chips," Wilson said, resigning himself to conducting the remaining interviews amid a pile of greasy cartons and the smell of cheese and garlic.

"Okay," House said, grinning malevolently for no apparent reason as he turned back to the interviewee with an expectant look.

"Sorry?" the candidate, a hopeful young man with a speciality in neurology, asked.

"You heard," House said impatiently. "Pepperoni pizza and chips. And two cokes. No, make that a coke and a beer."

"You want me to get you pizza?"

"No, I want you to dance the quadrille. _Of course_ I want you to organise pizza. _And_ Dr Wilson's order."

The candidate looked helplessly at Wilson, who shrugged. It could, after all, be worse: they were both lucky that this was the first time within House's memory that he was hiring. Goodness only knew what he'd get up to if he could remember the (admittedly few) other times he'd hired staff, because then he'd be even more bored than he was already, and likely as not he'd be trying to outdo himself with outrageous stunts.

Four hours later Wilson privately revised his estimate: it _was_ worse. It wasn't that House's caprices were more extravagant than usual. The problem was that his place of employment wasn't attuned to him yet.

"A fire alarm, a broken centrifuge, patients in panic on the second floor, and a complaint about sexual harassment. Dr House, would you care to explain in what manner this is related to 'hiring a team'?"

House leaned back comfortably in one of the visitor chairs in the Chief Administrator's office. "They were morons." He must have noticed Wilson tense up, because he amended, "_Some_ of them were morons."

"That doesn't explain why your staff interviews have left a trail of destruction."

House blinked innocently at Dr Wesley."So that in future, when I actually have a team, this sort of thing doesn't happen on a daily basis. That's kinda the idea of staff interviews, isn't it, to separate the wheat from the chaff? Just imagine what would happen if Miss Louboutin ever operated an MRI instead of a centrifuge!"

Wesley blinked at the list of names in front of him. "Miss, er, Louboutin?"

Wilson felt obliged to intervene. "That was Veronica Chiltern, I think. She was wearing Louboutin heels. House sets the candidates tasks to make sure that they are able to deal with the daily challenges of diagnostics."

"We have _technicians_ for our lab equipment," Wesley said.

"My staff run their own tests," House said, all relaxation wiped from his features.

"I'm afraid that …"

"I didn't make a request; I stated a fact."

"I see," Wesley said, frowning down at his desk.

"And you'll find a clause in my contract saying as much," House continued inexorably.

"Ah," Wesley said. "That's, well, awkward."

"For you, maybe," House conceded. "Not for the patients."

"Are you insinuating that our technicians are incapable of operating their equipment?" Wesley asked.

House leaned forward, his fingers steepled. "Your office is broken into, but all that's missing is a prominent politician's medical file that unfortunately contains the result of his crotch swab. Whom do you call, hospital security or Scotland Yard?"

"Scotland Yard," Wesley said automatically, "but I don't see …"

"House's team," Wilson translated, "specialise in dealing with rare and puzzling cases. They are trained to spot patterns where other people merely see negative test results, to see the whole, not just the part currently being tested, and to look for abnormalities in places that normal lab technicians aren't taught to consider."

"Very well," Wesley conceded, "but that doesn't explain the rest. Or why I'm being billed for …," he looked at a greasy cash receipt on his desk, "chips."

"It didn't seem fair to make Wilson pay for chips that he didn't want. Our first candidate got him chips with salt and vinegar. Wilson wanted _crisps_."

"That's what they call them here?" Wilson said, diverted. "Then I guess it was my fault."

"It was his fault for not making sure he got you right," House corrected. Turning back to Wesley he said, "My patients come from all over the world. If a young doctor whose daily television fare probably consists of American series can't understand an American, how will he get a decent patient history from people who speak no English whatsoever?"

Wesley had no answer to that.

House continued, "We also now know that Oxbridge Oaf would probably cause a mass panic in the Greater London area when confronted with rare infectious diseases like polio or the plague, if the way he communicated a potential meningitis break-out is any indication."

"You told the patients on the second floor that we have a meningitis epidemic?" Wesley said hollowly.

"Technically, _I_ didn't. My candidate did."

Wesley swivelled to his phone and punched in a few numbers – rather violently, Wilson thought. "Mrs Cribbs? If the press call, please tell them that there is no meningitis at this hospital, and there never was. It was a false alarm. Tell them we were testing our new guidelines for containing infectious diseases within the hospital environment, or something like that. … No, there are no new guidelines, but there _will_ be."

"Was that all?" House disentangled his limbs from the chair and made to rise, acting for all the world as if he had been asked down for an informal cup of afternoon tea.

"Excuse me for a moment, Mrs Cribbs," Wesley said into the phone. Then, pointing with the receiver at the chair House had just vacated, he said, "The sexual harassment, Dr House."

House sat down again, grimacing. Wilson tugged at his collar. He was having difficulties breathing.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs Cribbs," Wesley said, and put down the phone. "Ms Young informed our personnel department that you offered her a job in return for sexual favours. Is there any truth in her accusation, Dr Wilson?"

Wilson froze. Why was he suddenly being held responsible for what House had done? Before he could protest House's (partial) innocence, House interrupted indignantly, "That is total rubbish! Did she seriously think I'd pay her a full salary in return for a few blow jobs? I can get a much better deal from the ladies at Earl's Court."

"House!" Wilson gasped before a coughing fit rendered him speechless.

Wesley drew himself up behind his desk. "Dr House, I can make concessions regarding technical equipment and I can close an eye to a few disruptive incidents that were undoubtedly accidental and hopefully deeply regretted." Here he paused, but House looked smug rather than contrite. "However, we have a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment."

"Ah, I love hospital policies. So universally applicable," House murmured.

Wilson, still coughing into his handkerchief, held up a beseeching hand. Wesley politely waited for him to recover. "It," Wilson wheezed, "it was a stress test. House launches verbal attacks on people to see how they react."

"It was not!" House protested, ignoring Wilson's glare. "It was a simple test in probability." Snagging a letter from Wesley's desk, he turned it over and sketched some squares on the reverse. "You've got a parcheesi or ludo board, tokens, and a single dice. One of the spaces is 'Chores'. If a player's token lands on that space, that player has to do a chore for me."

"For example, wash House's car," Wilson interjected. That was the chore that House had suggested in the first interview.

Wesley frowned.

"Or take my laundry to the cleaner's," House continued. "Or clean my bathroom. Or, in the case we're discussing, give me a blow job."

"So you _did_ ask her to, uh, perform oral sex?" Wesley asked, blanching.

"No," House corrected. "I didn't even ask her to play. I asked how many rounds it would take on average before a player would have to go down on me."

"You hinted that you'd be amenable to receiving favours of a sexual nature," Wesley said tightly.

House's eyes glinted. "I don't 'hint'," he said, making the last word sound dirty. "If I had wanted sex, I'd have said so. I think we're done here. Good afternoon!"

"Umm, Dr House?" Wesley called after him, but House was out of the door already. Wilson wasn't quite as fast – or rude – so Wesley latched onto him instead. "I'm not sure whether Dr House understood what I was getting at," he said, looking at Wilson expectantly.

Wilson sighed as he tried to suppress the next coughing fit. Wesley would have to learn to deal; Wilson wasn't going to be around all the time. "When you fight a bull," he finally said, "you wave a red cloth to distract him, and you have to be prepared to jump aside really fast when he charges."

Wesley gave him a long stare. "I'm not sure whether this habit of talking in metaphors is particularly helpful."

"Your method," Wilson pointed out, "wasn't any more direct. You sat him down and asked him a lot of questions when all you wanted was for him to stop his disruptive behaviour. Don't ask him to explain his behaviour if you aren't interested in understanding him, because he'll out-explain you any day. And if you want to stop him, you need to put in a sprint to get in his way, no matter how ridiculous it makes you look. That, by the way, wasn't meant metaphorically, but literally."

Wilson found House back in his office, his feet on his desk, staring at the ceiling, one hand tapping an irritating rhythm on the pile of applications sitting on his desk.

"Was it really necessary to mention blow jobs?" Wilson said wearily. He'd witnessed House progressing from mild _ennui_ to unmitigated, mind-blowing boredom as the afternoon progressed, and it had come as no surprise that House's manners had deteriorated rapidly while the hypothetical chores had become more and more outrageous. He'd been a disaster waiting to happen.

House shrugged. "It's always a good idea to get your superior involved in the selection process," he dead-panned.

Wilson looked hopefully at the application files. "Which ones are you going to take?" he asked.

House swung his feet down and took the top file off the pile. "Ms Louboutin." He flicked his wrist and the file landed in the bin.

'Chips'n'Crisps' joined his colleague, as did 'Oxbridge Oaf'. Then another three applicants landed on top of them. And then House swept the remaining files off the desk into the overflowing bin.

"What was wrong with those?" Wilson asked, blinking. Rescuing the top three, he opened the first one to refresh his memory. "This one's fine. He answered all your questions satisfactorily, has good grades, and seems open and curious."

"How many candidates did I ask the 'chores' question?" House asked, piling up empty pizza cartons on the cleared desk space.

"Every one of them, I think," Wilson answered after a moment's thought.

"And how many got it right?"

"Most of them?" Wilson hazarded. He had loathed probability at school: one problem and twenty students had equalled twenty different solutions, none of which had ever turned out to be right.

House snorted in disgust. "The answer isn't 'six rounds', Wilson. Use your brain!" He rooted around in his desk until he found a twelve-inch ruler.

Wilson wisely ignored the slur on his intelligence. "So, you're refusing to hire a number of otherwise perfectly qualified physicians because they won't be able to break the bank in Vegas."

"No," House said, leaning the ruler against the pizza cartons to form a ramp that ran towards the edge of the desk. He fished an empty beer can from the trash and gauged the distance between the desk and the bin. "I'm refusing to hire a number of them because although I asked the same question in every interview, not one of the later candidates was curious enough to do the obvious – find out what the previous candidates were asked and prepare accordingly."

He placed the beer can at the top of the ramp. It wobbled along the ruler, but made it all the way down before it fell off the edge of the desk, landing on the floor a few inches beyond the bin. House scratched his head. "We need another pizza carton. Or maybe two."

"No," Wilson said. "Definitely not! You are not testing any further applicants by asking them to order pizza. Or by making them build a beer can run. Or do chores. Do something diagnostic with them: give them an imaginary case and ask them what tests they'd run, or something like that."

"Okay," House said. "The three whose suggestions make the most sense get the job. Satisfied?"

"Fine," Wilson said, more than satisfied.

His satisfaction lasted till the next morning, when it turned out that House intended to judge the efficacy of the tests and procedures suggested by the candidates by seeing if the results provided a valid diagnosis. Which, of course, could only be done if he had a real patient:

"Our Patient of the Day has a persistent, irritating cough – irritating to me, if not to him. Ten points for a test that provides a definite diagnosis, three points for a test that successfully excludes a condition, and minus five points for tests that are inconclusive, redundant, time consuming, or expensive," House elucidated to the assembled candidates.

"But … there are tests that are time consuming and expensive, but necessary in order to get a definitive diagnosis," the Dumb-ass of the Day said.

"Totally," House affirmed. "And there are bosses who are going to put money before medicine. My selection process mirrors life's realities."

Wilson felt that in real life, he'd be told without further ado that he had a viral infection and would have to live with it until it had run its course, rather than be subjected to blood tests, lung x-rays, and the like for the entire day. Apparently some of the candidates felt the same.

"What if he only has the common cold?" one of them asked rather desperately.

"Then narrow it down without blowing the hospital's resources," House advised. "You have today to run your tests, take blood for the blood work, do scans, and so on and so forth. Then you have two days to find a diagnosis. We meet again on Friday at 10 am."

He gave them a friendly wave, and then he sauntered out, leaving Wilson in the midst of a crowd of applicants who closed in on him like vampires too long deprived of blood.


	3. New Ga(i)l

**A/N**:This chapter may distress H/Cu shippers. You have been warned, and the rest of the fic is probably comprehensible even if you skip this chapter.

* * *

**Christmas 2015**

_House has no intention of attending the hospital Christmas party. It has some other fancy name, 'End-of-Year Festivity', in keeping with the hospital's policy of maintaining religious neutrality and it takes place after Christmas instead of before. Nevertheless, in all essentials it is what it used to be when the times still allowed the old-fashioned appellation: lots of food and booze accompanied by an appalling selection of music._

_Wilson only finds out about it because he decides to drop in on House at work while Cuddy takes Rachel on a day of sightseeing. (Trust Rachel to come all this way only to insist on seeing the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum; she could have gotten those in the States.) While they're having lunch in the canteen – the fries are unbelievably greasy, while the peas, of a chemical shade of green, are mashed to a pulp – House's boss walks up to their table._

"_Dr House, I hope we'll see you tonight at our staff party," he says, his demeanour indicating that he isn't expecting a negative reply._

_Wilson doesn't have to glance at House to know what _his_ demeanour is screaming out. He intervenes with the ease that years of practice have imbued, rising and holding out his hand. "Dr Wesley, I believe? I'm James Wilson, House's former colleague from Princeton. Thank you so much for inviting Dr Cuddy and me to the hospital's End-of-Year festivities. We'll be glad to come."_

_Dr Wesley is slightly bemused. "Pleased to meet you," he says automatically, shaking the extended hand. He glances from Wilson to House as though looking for a clue, but House, wearing his sinister _not-what-I-expected-but-this-could-be-just-as-good_ expression, lets the good man stew in his ignorance. _

"_Well, I'm glad you'll be able to make it tonight," Wesley finally says, looking at neither of them specifically, after which he beats a hasty retreat._

"_Smooth," House comments. "How do you intend to explain my absence to him?"_

"_I don't," Wilson says shortly. "You said we could do whatever I liked tonight. I choose the Christmas party."_

"_I could be introducing you to London's gay scene, nude scene, or gay-nude scene, and you choose a dinky Christmas party? Come on, Wilson!"_

"_Chase has a pool going on how long you'll last in this job. I'm not forfeiting my 100 dollars without a fight," Wilson says straight-faced. He deftly changes the topic before House starts digging in his heels in earnest. "Wesley addressed you as _Doctor_ House. Doesn't he know that you haven't got a licence?"_

"_Sure he does, but the title isn't protected in this country. Anyone can use it, even a tree doctor."_

"_So you're wilfully deceiving people into believing that …"_

"_Not me!" House cuts in. "_My boss_ is wilfully deceiving people." He huffs in irritation at Wilson's look of disbelief. "Think about it, Wilson. If my patients find out that officially I can't even take their temperature without supervision, they'll be all over him demanding that they be treated by a 'real' doctor."_

_Wilson points an accusing finger at him. "But you're not stopping him!"_

_House shrugs. "He does it because it benefits him, but it also benefits me so I'd be an idiot to stop him. It's difficult enough as it is to get an accurate patient history. Tell my patients that I don't have a licence and they'll not only lie through their teeth, but feel completely justified in doing so."_

–––––––––

_Cuddy is predictably unenthusiastic about leaving Rachel alone in a strange environment, nor does she have a vested interest in Chase's pool (should that pool actually exist, but Wilson is prepared to bet 100 dollars that it does), but she can be persuaded to see the wisdom of investing some energy into keeping House employed for as long as possible._

"_But why do _I_ have to come along? I'm fine spending a quiet night with Rachel at the hotel," she protests._

"_Because evading _two_ people in order to slip out the back door is more difficult than slipping past one person," Wilson explains patiently._

_They are fashionably late, their tardiness caused not only by House arriving at their hotel twenty minutes past the agreed time, but also by Cuddy getting Rachel settled for the night, making sure that Rachel has her cell phone number, and double and triple checking whether Rachel is okay with the hotel's babysitting service looking in on her at regular intervals. (Rachel at age eight is already an eye-roll specialist, and her, 'Mom, I'm not a baby!' reverberates in Wilson's ears long after the cab has drawn away from the hotel's curb.) The net result is that they are banished to a small table in a corner of the festive hall, but in view of House's general reluctance to come at all and the level of jackassery he's already displaying, the further on the fringe they are, the better._

_It takes Wilson some time to figure out that they are being treated like pariahs by most of the staff _not_ because House has already managed to antagonise his colleagues, but because (oh, blissful circumstance!) House's face is still practically unknown; his British colleagues are, on average, much too reticent to introduce themselves to a bunch of complete strangers. So, other than polite nods and smiles, they are left pretty much to themselves for the first twenty minutes after their arrival._

_Cuddy has left the room, ostensibly to powder her nose, but more probably to phone the hotel's babysitting service, when Wilson's musings on a young blonde in a pink party hat are interrupted._

"_You're Dr House?" says a voice with a slight lilt. (Scottish? Irish? Wilson can never tell the difference.) It belongs to a tall woman in her late thirties or early forties, her hair the shade that Rachel calls 'ginger' but that Wilson prefers to refer to as 'auburn', her complexion pale and freckled. The hint of make-up she wears enhances clear grey-green eyes, eyes that are trained on House with a look that Wilson knows. He's seen it on all too many colleagues' and patients' faces in past years: the _you've-pissed-me-off_ look. _

_Brilliant! His first social interaction of the evening is going to be Defusing a Situation that House has managed to create without even knowing the colleague in question._

_House scoots his chair back and tips his head to assess her, which she takes as an affirmative answer to her question. She slides unbidden into the chair Cuddy just vacated. "Gail Fothergill," she says, "I teach psychology to our Foundation Year doctors."_

_House allows his eyes to travel down her form and then, slowly, up again. "Tell me again why I'm supposed to be pleased to meet you," he drawls. "Because I really can't tell why I should be."_

_Wilson draws in a sharp breath. Gail may not be the material that fuels shower fantasies, but she's not exactly hard on the eyes either. She isn't as curvaceous as House normally likes 'em and of course ginger can't compete with brunette, but no doubt the primary reason for House's crude rebuttal is his unhappiness at being here at the party, which really isn't Gail's fault._

_Before Wilson can come to Gail's rescue she replies coolly, "I wasn't aiming to please." Without a pause she gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Dr House, on Tuesday the Foundies didn't come to my class. Later I was informed that you'd insisted that they stay longer in your Diagnostics class to examine a _dead rat_."_

"_To diagnose a _patient_," House corrects her, adding regretfully, "who unfortunately didn't live long enough to benefit from their diagnosis."_

"_The rat was dead when you pushed it into the MRI," Gail says. "It could have waited."_

"_You did an MRI on a rat?" Wilson murmurs, wondering why he's surprised._

"_I, too, would have much preferred to have done the MRI at some other time, but until I've sussed out enough dirt on the radiology technicians to be able to monopolise the MRI whenever I need it, I will have to make do with whatever time slot I'm assigned," House says with a hint of real regret. "But don't get your hopes up: _your_ preferences won't influence the way I plan class assignments, no matter how cooperative radiology or the labs are."_

_Gail props her chin on her hand. "So you're of the opinion that your Diagnostics class supersedes Psychology and that carrying out procedures on dead rats is more important than learning 'psychobabble'?"_

"_Oooh, someone's iddly-widdly feelings got hurt!" House crows. He's serious a moment later, matching Gail's chin-on-hand posture and staring straight into her eyes from a mere foot away. "The dead rat proves my point. Had the students focused all their energy on it instead of rushing from class to class, the wee beastie might have lived. Once my students have diagnosed their patient, they're free to indulge in esoteric pastimes, but until then patient care has priority. Diagnostics is all about saving lives."_

"_What ailed your vermin – sorry, 'patient'?" Gail enquires, not backing away an inch from his proximity. _

_Wilson can't remember ever hearing anyone use the word 'ail'. The musical timbre of her voice, the archaic vocabulary, and the soft lilt have a heady effect, rather like a strong, sweet wine._

"_Mrs Murida Rattus suffered from cancer. Ovarian cancer. With timely treatment – who knows? – she might have survived," House says with an air of melancholy._

"_Just as she might have, if the Foundation class understood rat language, enabling them to obtain a proper patient history. They don't (more's the pity for the vermin population), but they _are _ capable of learning to communicate with human patients, to understand their body language, and to read between the lines. All of that will save a lot of lives, especially when you consider that NHS patients have to wait for months to get an MRI or a CT scan done. Furthermore, our doctors can learn to give clear, unambiguous treatment instructions that patients can understand and follow, thereby saving even more lives. And that's what _I_ teach them." Having made her point, Gail leans back. "I have instructed the class to appear early in my classroom next week to make up for the time we lost this week, so you needn't bother to wait for them. And in future, do try to ensure that you dismiss the class punctually, Dr House."_

"_Pete," House says._

"_I'm sorry?"_

"_That's my name: Pete. It's short for Gregory House, which is short for 'Genius Diagnostician with an International Reputation Who Can Out-bully You Any Day'. If you're going to invade my privacy every time I step on your metaphorical bunions, we'll be very intimate very soon, so let's switch to first names, shall we?" _

_House has the slightest of grins on his lips as he fixes Gail with one of his mesmerising stares, but she is not that easily intimidated. She leans forward again, very consciously moving into his personal space, the upward tug on her lips mirroring House's. _

"_Very well, _Pete_." Looking up at something slightly to Wilson's left, she says, rising, "Oh, sorry, did I take your place? I'll be gone in a moment."_

_Wilson twists to see Cuddy behind him, back from wherever she was. She has a thoughtful, slightly worried expression on her face._

_Pushing her chair back, Gail smiles down at House. "You intend to tell the Foundation class to ignore me and come to your class anyway, and then you'll keep them late again, won't you?" she enquires sweetly._

_House's smirk has morphed into a full-fledged grin. He tips his head slightly to confirm her surmise, and then he rises to tower over her. "I'm bigger and badder than you," he says, "and a lot scarier when I yell. They'll come."_

"_I won't _have_ to yell when I inform them that 'Psychobabble for Beginners', as you deigned to call it, is a compulsory course on which they will be graded, while 'Introduction to Diagnostics' is an optional course with a mere pass requirement. Guess which one they'll choose to attend? Have a good evening, Dr House! It was a pleasure to get to know you." She gives the others a polite smile. "Sorry for disturbing you, but these things are best settled in an informal, relaxed atmosphere, don't you think?" And then she's gone, as quickly as she came._

_Wilson tries to catch Cuddy's eye as she sits down again, willing her to share in his amusement at House's expression of gob-smacked appreciation at being bested, but she's quiet, preoccupied with the pattern on the paper tablecloth. Nor does she, when Wilson and House assess and grade Dr Fothergill's charms on the Richter scale, accompany their litany with her usual exasperated eye roll. Something is decidedly off._

_When House goes off to get another beer, Wilson turns to Cuddy. "Is everything okay at the hotel?" he asks._

"_What? Yes," Cuddy answers somewhat belatedly, her eyes following House. Wilson, following her line of vision, suddenly notices Gail Fothergill standing at the bar towards which House is headed. Oh, holy shit! Should he hope for the best or should he intervene before they start World War III?_

_Cuddy is saying something that Wilson doesn't catch in his preoccupation. "I'm sorry. I was distracted," he says._

"_I was saying that I'd like to go back to the hotel. I honestly don't like leaving Rachel in new surroundings even if there's a babysitting service." She rises, but places a restraining hand on his arm. "You and Pete stay here. I'll catch a cab." And with that she's gone, which is a pity since the buffet is about to open. _

_Wilson returns his attention to House, who has sidled up to the bar next to Gail Fothergill. If they are carrying on any sort of feud, then it's under cover of perfect amicability and harmony, because neither of them displays the slightest sign of displeasure or animosity in expression or body language. Wilson sighs with relief and turns his attention to the buffet. There he bumps into a fellow oncologist whom he met years ago at a conference in Washington, and before he knows it, it's midnight and House has been MIA for hours. He finally finds House outside smoking a cigar, looking generally pleased with the world._

"_I'm sorry – I met an old friend," Wilson apologises with a twinge of guilt. 'Friend' is a gross exaggeration, but that's something House with his amnesia can't know._

"_S'okay," House mouths through his cigar. "I met a new one." And his smile, as they go in search of a cab, is both youthful and devious._

**April 2016**

They'd all wanted to draw blood, take x-rays and do full-body scans – until Wilson had pointed out gently that it would reflect badly on their people skills and their ability to cope with meagre resources if they made pin cushions of real patients and exposed them to radiation poisoning. He was prepared to subject himself to each procedure _once only_, and they'd better decide which ones they really needed. And no, he was _very_ sorry, but he would not consent to a liver biopsy. (He did, however, allow them all to listen to his lungs, peer down his throat, and do all the other manual non-invasive 'doctor things' they could think of.)

By mid-afternoon they were done. "So, what's the plan for the next two days?" he asked, mindful of House's instructions to the applicants to be done by Friday. "Do you have a patient?"

"Nope; I'm all yours. Tell me what you want to do and we'll do it."

House's cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket, and after looking at the screen he took the call, his tensed features relaxing into something akin to a smile. "Hey," he breathed into the phone, his eyes creasing, the lines on his forehead smoothing out. He leaned back comfortably, crossing his ankles and swivelling to and fro gently in his chair.

The House Wilson knew didn't 'breathe' into phones. Nor did his thumb caress the phone as he talked. And he certainly didn't smile fondly at whatever the person at the other end said.

He was suffering from delusions, Wilson decided, brought on by the multiple procedures carried out on him today.

"Dinner sounds great," House was saying. "Your place? … No, it's fine. … Okay, see you in half an hour."

He looked up, grimacing when he saw Wilson's speculative glance. "You're meeting someone for dinner?" Wilson asked.

"Yes."

The scant reply filled Wilson with foreboding. "A woman?"

"Is that a crime?" House asked.

"Since you're deflecting – yes," Wilson replied. He remembered Cuddy's suspicion. "Is this the psychologist we met at Christmas at the hospital do?"

"And if it was?" House countered with a question once again.

That was an Ill Portent. It meant 'yes', and it meant that House not only knew that this wasn't a Good Idea, but that he intended to pursue this Bad Idea no matter what Wilson said.

And Wilson had no doubt that this was a Bad Idea, because the only reason he hadn't taken much notice of House's interest in Ms Fothergill at the time had been because subconsciously he'd assumed that even if House were interested, the object of his pursuit wouldn't return the sentiment. She had been wearing a plain gold band on her left hand.

"House … Pete, she's married!"

"Would that stop you?" House asked.

Wilson looked at him suspiciously. The mocking tone that House used to adopt whenever Wilson's sex life in general and his marital life in particular had come up was notably absent. There was also no sign of guile on House's face; his expression was curious and somewhat disbelieving. Wilson wondered whether Nolan's notes and Chase's anecdotes had omitted Wilson's marital and extra-marital imbroglios.

He wasn't sure whether he was pleased that House's unfailing source of mockery had run dry in the drought of his amnesia. He'd never been able to keep anything of note secret from House, and while every newly uncovered secret had brought with it a stream of ridicule and sarcasm, there had been an odd comfort in knowing that the man who knew the darkest corners of his soul didn't despise him for them. This total stranger in front of him, how would he react?

House was still waiting for an answer. Wilson sighed. "No, it wouldn't. Or rather, being married didn't stop me from cheating. But trust me, it never ended well, and the last time you interfered in an existing marriage it was messy."

"I'm not interfering in an existing marriage," House said, with emphasis on 'existing'.

"She's a widow?" Wilson said hopefully. If the woman were divorced, she probably wouldn't be wearing the ring.

"Nope. Hubby had a midlife crisis. He's busy screwing one of his students."

"So she's on the rebound," Wilson said, hardly happier than before.

"People are either in a relationship or on the rebound," House said with a shrug. "When you score, it doesn't matter whether it's a direct shot or off a rebound."

"Maybe, but in this game you aren't a starter. You're a reserve player who will get pulled off the court any moment."

House looked sinisterly enthusiastic. "No, I won't. I've done my research; I know what she's interested in, what food she likes, what music she listens to, her favourite novels. I've been attentive without being stifling. I've shown due interest in her offspring while making sure they know I'm not trying to replace MIA Dad."

"She has kids?" Wilson said with a sinking heart. This could not go well.

"Two teenagers," House said dismissively. "Teens are simple: ignore them and they'll ignore you."

"Pete, that won't work," Wilson argued, wondering why he was bothering. "They may not care, but their mother will."

"Relax – I've got it all under control. Went to the cinema with them, let them listen to the music on my playlist, showed them how to hack the parental control on their computer and download movies from the internet, so now I'm their hero."

Wilson's brow furrowed. "How long has this been going on?"

"A few months," House admitted with diffident pride. He glanced at the display of his cell phone, his lips twitching in a smile. For a brief moment he looked almost boyish.

A few months! And Wilson had known nothing, suspected nothing. Unlike Cuddy … oh, Jesus, Cuddy!

"Does – Cuddy know?" Wilson asked hesitantly.

House's gaze snapped up, his facial muscles tensing. He slipped the cell phone back into his jacket pocket and rose from his chair, leaning down to pick up his backpack. "Is it any business of hers?" he said, his back strategically turned on Wilson.

Oh, they were back to question and counter-question, were they? "You tell me," Wilson said, playing the ball right back into House's court.

"Lisa and I are not in a relationship," House said brusquely.

Wilson was used to House's deflections and feints. "That's not what I asked. I asked whether you don't owe it to her to let her know about this."

Blue-grey eyes scrutinised Wilson. "Why would I owe her anything?"

"Oh, I don't know," Wilson said. "Maybe because she still feels something for you, …"

"Not my problem," House interjected.

Ignoring him, Wilson continued stolidly, "Or because she went to one hell of a lot of trouble to get you out of a mess of your own making, …"

"Didn't ask her to," House said, but he wouldn't meet Wilson's gaze and his tone was surly.

"Or because it would be nice to play with open cards, instead of letting her believe that there's a chance …"

House clearly had no intention of letting him finish a single sentence uninterrupted. "Did she play with open cards when she 'forgot' to tell me that she knew about my past?"

"Oh, is this payback time?" Wilson asked. "Tell me, whose wishes was she supposed to respect: those of House, who wanted to forget his past, or those of Peter Barnes, who didn't know whether he wanted to know about the past he was digging up? Did you even tell Cuddy that you had amnesia and were researching your background?"

House was silent.

"I take it that's a no." Wilson tugged a hand through his hair, wondering how to get through to a man whose capacity for nursing grudges was phenomenal.

Wait – what grudge?

To date, House had shown no sign of resenting the choices Cuddy had made after meeting him unexpectedly three years after he had nuked his hippocampus. The only aspect of her conduct that he deplored was that she'd chosen to renew the contact between herself and the man who could easily have killed her four years earlier. That sort of 'idiocy', as House would (and did) call it, violated his sense of what was sane and rational. Withholding relevant information, however, was par for the course in House's world. House didn't impart information voluntarily, and he expected others to be as secretive as he was himself.

So what was the issue here?

Wilson pondered House's previous statements. House denying any obligation to Cuddy didn't mean that he didn't feel indebted to her. It just meant that he wasn't willing to _admit_ to any sort of emotional involvement, which was typical for House. He'd always refused to entertain the notion that he was capable of feeling responsibility for anyone he was affiliated with, maybe hoping that _professing_ indifference would make him feel that way too. If you didn't care, you couldn't get hurt.

House was bothered about telling Cuddy precisely _because_ he was afraid she'd get hurt. Which was great, really great! There had been times when House, emotionally numbed by Vicodin, hadn't even fathomed that his words or actions had the capacity to hurt others, let alone allowed the knowledge to bother him.

Wilson's first impulse was to let House know that he was onto him, but he managed to bite his tongue and survey his options. He could subject House to a dose of psychoanalysis, but much good that had ever done! He could try to impress on House the need to be open with Cuddy about this, but if House was in total denial about his odd bond with Cuddy, then he might as well talk to the wall.

Really, it would be simplest if he told Cuddy himself! But telling Cuddy about House's private life behind his back? Ten years ago he'd have done that with no compunction whatsoever (and the other way around too, to boot), secure in House's undying loyalty. Now he wasn't sure how that would go down with House.

He could, of course, just let things take their natural course. It was unlikely that Cuddy would pine endlessly for House – judging by her sparse hints at the airport and the fact that she'd chosen not to join him on this trip to England, it was more than likely that she suspected that House was otherwise involved. But suspicions, no matter how strong, did not equal knowledge, and Wilson for his part knew only too well how difficult it was to let go of someone you loved as long as there was still hope. Besides, Cuddy was a lot better at dealing with clear-cut situations than at hanging in limbo. She'd deal with it and move on, and that would be the end of the matter.

Which left Wilson with a decision to make: he could either do what was good for Cuddy at the risk of breaking the fragile bond that was forming between himself and House, or he could keep his peace and nurture his relationship with House with no regard for Cuddy's needs. Or …

He surprised himself by saying quietly, "Do you mind if _I_ tell her?"

House stared at him thoughtfully. Finally he shrugged, saying, "Do what you like. It's no state secret." And with that he shouldered his backpack. At the door he stopped. "Did you say what you wanted to do till Friday?"

"Well, I …," Wilson floundered.

"You've got till tomorrow morning to think about it. I'll pick you up. Eight o'clock sharp!" he threw over his shoulder and was gone before Wilson could object to the unearthly hour.


	4. Memories and Manias

**A/N:** Thanks to everyone who reviews and comments, especially Alex, Abby and the Guest, whom I can't thank personally.

* * *

**Christmas 2015**

_Rachel hums the Harry Potter theme all the way to Oxford. Cuddy considers dampening her expectations – reality can never keep up with the fairy tale that Rachel paints for herself in anticipation – but decides to enjoy these last blissful moments of peace before Rachel reverts to her usual cantankerous self._

_They start off with Christ Church, featuring, as Wilson's travel guide assures them, 'locations used in the movies' and the Great Hall, 'replicated to create the Hall at Hogwarts'. _

_Rachel is suitably impressed by the quadrangles. She resolutely counters all of Wilson's attempts to widen her horizon with random facts about Lewis Carroll by describing in detail every scene from Harry Potter that was shot in the cloisters. When they enter the Meadows Buildings disillusionment sets in._

"_There are supposed to be stairs," she says, irritated._

"_Huh?" Wilson says._

"_Big stairs, going up to the Hall," Rachel explains._

"_There **are** stairs," Wilson points out._

_Yes, there are – unfortunately. There are enough steps to pose a serious impediment to a wheelchair-bound child, but they aren't even remotely as grand as the flight connecting the rest of Hogwarts to its entrance hall. Not for the first time Cuddy thanks her lucky stars that Wilson has come along with them instead of choosing to stay with Pete (who opted to skip the joys of a day out with a child). They've already developed a routine: Cuddy plucks Rachel out of the wheelchair and goes ahead with her; Wilson folds the wheelchair with a practiced movement, carries it up the stairs overtaking Rachel and Cuddy with his quick strides, and unfolds it again at the top._

"_Forget it," Cuddy, peering into the Hall past a group of Chinese tourists, says to Wilson as he places the wheelchair strategically in front of her. "There isn't enough room for the wheelchair in there."_

_So Wilson takes Rachel, who is pissed at being carried around like a baby and even more pissed when she realises that the Christ Church Hall is not only much smaller than its cinematic counterpart, but also has a perfectly normal ceiling._

"_That's stupid! They're cheating!"_

"_We'll go to the Library next," Wilson says bracingly._

_Cuddy's heart sinks when they get to the Bodleian Library and she reads the notice at the gate: children under the age of ten are not permitted in Duke Humfrey's Library, the part of the Bodleian Library in which the Hogwarts Library scenes were shot. She's used to checking up on wheelchair accessibility, but she didn't reckon with attractions where Rachel's age might be an impediment._

"_But she can see the Divinity School," the lady at the ticket counter says, smiling kindly at Rachel. "That's the Infirmary in the Harry Potter films."_

_As Cuddy envisions what Rachel will say about an Infirmary with no beds and no Madam Pomfrey, Wilson pulls an envelope out of his pocket and hands it to the lady. She takes out the letter inside, reads it with a puzzled frown and then reaches for the telephone, saying, "Excuse me."_

_A few moments later she smiles at them and says almost obsequiously, "The librarian who'll take you up to Duke Humfrey's Reading Room will be here in a few minutes. If you like, you can look around the quadrangle until he comes." She hands them a set of audio guides, waving away the credit card that Wilson proffers._

_About fifteen minutes later an elderly gentleman comes up to them. "Drs Cuddy and Wilson?" he asks. "Ah, and there's the young lady. Miss Rachel Cuddy, I believe? I'm Trevor Owen. I'm told you'd like to see Duke Humfrey's Reading Room." _

_He gives Rachel a little mock bow; his whole air reminiscent of the faun in the Narnia Chronicles. Cuddy catches herself squinting at his feet to see whether he has hoofs._

_Mr Owen rather rushes them through the Divinity School saying that he needs to get them up into the Reading Room before noon, but Cuddy is much too flummoxed to follow any of his erudite explanations, to appreciate the elaborate vaulting, or to care who got to use which entrance on what occasion. Rachel, however, has regained some of her former good spirits: the Divinity School may be sadly lacking in the trappings that would make it a _bona fide_ Infirmary, but it has a 'cool' fifteenth century money chest which 'looks exactly like Professor Moody's trunk'. Besides, she and Mr Owen hit it off from the start; it seems that fauns and little girls are soul mates in any world. Mr Owen, whose grandchildren also like Harry Potter, shows great interest in Professor Moody's trunk and quite sees the parallels to the object on exhibit._

_But even Rachel's running commentary ebbs into an awestruck silence when they finally make it up to the Reading Room. There's a tourist group in the ante-room, being instructed to maintain strict silence and to keep their fingers off the exhibits, but Mr Owen waves them past the group and magically opens the gate that separates the actual reading room from the small section open to the general public. For once Rachel doesn't object to being hoisted up in Wilson's arms; her eyes have gone large and round, and it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what she'll talk about the next few days._

_Cuddy, who can only follow Mr Owen's tripping steps in a daze, finally asks Wilson in a whispered aside – the silence here is very hallowed indeed! – "How'd you do that?"_

_Wilson shrugs. "No idea. House told me to show that letter at the gate, so that's what I did."_

_Mr Owen, overhearing them, gives them a quizzical smile. "It seems that you have friends in high places. I got an email yesterday from the head of the Medical Sciences Division asking me for this little favour, which, so he assures me, will ensure that the university's global appeal will continue to rise."_

_Cuddy and Wilson frown at each other in puzzlement, but soon the delight of roaming around a room filled with a sense of history, surrounded by rare folios, and bathed in light from the gothic window at the end of the room, supersedes their need to know. As Cuddy tells herself, in Pete-alias-House's case it is often better not to know._

_Pete, however, is rather amused when he's confronted with the accusation of blackmailing some Oxford bigwig. "They were happy to do me a favour," he avers, "from colleague to colleague, so to say." _

_He rubs his chin meditatively. "Okay, so I _may_ have hinted that I _might_ agree to give a series of guest lectures at the university if they let Rachel into their fusty old attic."_

* * *

**April 2016**

"Remind me again why we came here," House said, peeling the batter off his haddock and stuffing it into his mouth. "The two ugliest cathedrals in the whole of Europe, two houses that look exactly the same as any you could have seen in London, docks in a drizzle of rain, and a museum overrun with pesky school brats."

"I grew up with the Beatles," Wilson said with a reminiscent smile. "When I was eleven my uncle gave us a portable audio cassette player for Hanukkah and a Beatles cassette each. Till then we'd listened to other stuff: Michael – my older brother – used to decide what radio station we listened to, and Michael liked country music. But now we had a cassette player and three cassettes – our _only_ three cassettes – and none of them were country music. So Michael said, 'We're gonna to listen to these cassettes until we like the music,' and we did. We listened to the Beatles non-stop for six weeks. It drove Mom crazy." He hummed _Love Me Do_ happily as he speared a greasy potato fry. (Why on earth did the Brits put vinegar on them? It was disgusting!)

"Your uncle should have given you Rolling Stones cassettes," House said moodily. "Jagger and Richards come from Kent, just round the corner from London. We would have been spared a three-hour drive, and your taste in music would have been vastly improved."

"It could have been worse," Wilson said. "Danny, my younger brother, likes Abba."

It was odd, having to explain his family to House. It was even odder giving him these snippets of information in the knowledge that they meant nothing to him, whereas some ten years ago House's eyebrows would have quirked up in delight as he connected the dots between the way Wilson reacted to Abba songs on the radio and his family history. Wilson recalled the time he and House had been driving together and 'Dancing Queen' had come on the radio. He hadn't been able to suppress his reaction to the song, one of Danny's favourites. (Danny had played the Abba record again and again, dancing around the room and singing along off-key, his hair flying.) Noting Wilson's reaction House had promptly downloaded the corresponding ringtone and assigned it to Wilson's number. Wilson hadn't disabused House of the notion that he liked Abba; rather than tell him about Danny he had preferred to be thought a closet Abba fan.

Back in the present House sang in a loud high falsetto, "_Mamma mia, here I go again, My, my, how could I resist you?_" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Wilson, who blushed as other guests turned to stare at them.

"_Mamma mia, does it show again, my, my, just how much I missed you?_" Leaning his chin on his hand House lifted a lascivious eyebrow.

If House thought the public attention would faze Wilson, he had another think coming. As long as House didn't hit on Danny's true favourite, 'I Have a Dream', he might just be able to keep his act together. Wilson frowned at the memory of Danny standing in the middle of their bedroom, arms stretched out wide, head thrown back, singing with full conviction, "_I believe in angels!_" Danny had really believed in angels.

Wilson pushed his plate away and rose. "Let's go," he said. "We have a long drive back."

"Three hours," House said. "What's the hurry? I haven't got a patient."

"Four hours, because _I'm_ driving back," Wilson said. "And I want to stop somewhere on the way."

"You've got to be joking!" House said an hour later, and his tone implied that he meant it. He'd been liberal with ridicule at the idea of visiting the Beatles' birthplace, but Wilson suspected that secretly he hadn't been all that unwilling to go. There was no doubt, however, about his opinion on the sanity of visiting the 'National Trust property of Lyme Park, house and garden', as the sign they had just passed advertised.

"It's one of the largest houses in Britain, it's got an interesting mix of architectural styles – an Elizabethan front, a mix of Baroque and Palladian styles – and the gardens are said to be splendid," Wilson said neutrally, pulling up in the parking lot.

"Says your travel guide. Does it also say that it's frequented by busloads of gerontosauruses and slit-eyed tourists?" Amnesia hadn't improved House's grasp of political correctness.

Wilson got out of the car.

"I'm hungry," House whined behind him.

"Two tickets for the grounds and the house, please," Wilson said to the lady at the ticket counter, sliding his credit card through the hole in the glass pane.

"It's gonna start raining any moment, and you have a cough already."

Brushing aside this heartfelt concern for his wellbeing, Wilson showed the tickets to the man at the turnstile, who waved them through. "The house is straight ahead, but you get the best view from over there by the lake," the man said helpfully.

"Thanks," Wilson said.

"I'm too tired to walk …. o-o-o-o-oh!" House said, as they rounded a copse, giving them an unimpeded view of the mansion they were visiting. "Pemberley! Wilson, you sly girl, you never told me that you'd cast your eye on Mr Darcy." The tiredness was wiped off his face as he inspected Wilson with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. "Let me guess: you and your girl-friends get together for long P&P nights with glasses of Chardonnay and lots of chocolate, and then you keep hitting the back button when Colin Firth rises from the garden pond like Venus from the waves."

House's surmise wasn't all that far off. "My second wife, Bonnie, and her friends used to do that. I'd cook for them and make snacks."

That had been during the first years of their marriage, before he'd started staying late at work or dropping in on House to 'see how he was coping' or meeting up with colleagues after work to 'keep in touch', and all those other excuses he'd thought up to get away from the unmitigated boredom at home.

"They'd break out in squeals of delight during the lake scene. And yes, they kept replaying it. _Keep_ replaying it," he corrected himself. "I imagine they still have their P&P nights, but I don't get invited anymore."

"You dragged me here because your ex has the hots for Colin Firth?" House mocked. He leaned over from behind, resting his chin on Wilson's shoulder so he could murmur in his ear. "Oh, come on, Wilson, admit it – you thought he looked sexy in that wet shirt with his nipples showing. There's no shame in that: a tall, broody guy, with dark curls and those intense eyes that make you feel like only you can allay the loneliness that lurks within."

Wilson shook his head to clear away the image House was evoking. "Actually," he said rather primly, "my wife's friends used to say that I look like Colin Firth."

House drew back. "You're kidding."

"Well, I was a bit younger and slimmer, and I have dark hair," Wilson said defensively.

House looked him up and down, his lips pursed. "Could be, I suppose. But we'd have to do the ultimate test to be sure. Go jump in." He waved his hand in the direction of the lake and started stomping towards it.

"Now _you're_ kidding," Wilson said.

House, heading down to the lake at a remarkable pace, threw back over his shoulder, "We can only see if you resemble Colin Firth if you're as wet as he was. I dare you to jump in."

"Don't be ridiculous," Wilson said weakly.

"Wuss!"

"There's a sign saying that swimming in the lake is strictly prohibited," Wilson said, pointing to the offending object.

House drew up at the edge of the lake, his eyes gleaming. "I double dare you!"

"Where are we – in kindergarten?"

But House just stood there smirking knowingly. Wilson cast a quick glance around. The park was fairly empty, and no one was heading their way. There was a group of tourists about fifty yards away, but they were moving away from them, towards the house.

"Oh, okay," Wilson said. "Hang onto my coat and my shoes." He slipped out of his shoes and socks and flung his coat down on the pile.

"You have to dive in over there," House said, pointing to a spot halfway round the circumference of the lake, "and come up just about here."

"Forget it!" Wilson said. "If this is about how I look in a wet t-shirt, then it doesn't matter how far I swim. I'm jumping in from here." And he moved over to a spot only twenty yards away, where he gingerly dipped a toe into the water. "It's cold!" he said, pulling his foot back with a yelp of surprise.

"What did you expect – the weather's been crappy. Come on! Colin Firth also had to jump in the day they had the location; _he_ didn't get to choose the sunniest day of the year either."

"He got paid for it," Wilson muttered, crouching down in preparation for the dive.

"You get honour and glory …," he heard House say as the water leapt towards him.

The first thing he saw when he surfaced was House's Smartphone aimed at him. "… And a new picture on Facebook."

The second thing he saw was three security guards heading their way. Crap!

"Sir, I must ask you to leave the water immediately!" one of them barked.

"Gladly," Wilson answered glowering at House, who was grinning manically. He waded towards the shore, water streaming off him. He felt like a waterlogged rat and he probably looked like one too. So much for the sexy, broody Darcy aura!

"I'm afraid there's a fifty pound fine," another guard, a woman in her mid-forties who looked as though she normally sold pastries in the food shop, said somewhat apologetically.

"Fifty pounds?" Wilson said and sneezed.

"Bless you! Yes, I'm sorry. We had to introduce a fine, because people kept hopping into the lake the first years after the series aired. Haven't had an Incident for quite a few years now, have we?" she said to the other two.

"No," one of her colleagues confirmed. "And I don't remember any involving just men," he added, giving them a suspicious look.

Wilson shuffled awkwardly. He was freezing and he'd rather have this over with. "Do you take American Express?"

House intervened. "Couldn't you waive the fine? I mean, if you don't have that many 'incidents' any more … We did this for his wife who, uh, couldn't come. She thinks he looks like Colin Firth." His tone indicated what _he_ thought of that.

"They all think that," one of the men muttered. But the woman had tipped her head sideways, giving Wilson a kindly look.

"I think he does look a bit like Colin Firth," she said with a warm smile for Wilson.

House rolled his eyes. "He's much too short, he's got a totally different physique, and just look at those eyebrows!"

The woman frowned in thought. "Maybe I'm getting him mixed up with that other actor. You know, the one who was in that Shakespeare adaption with Kenneth Branagh. _He's_ very good-looking too."

"Thanks," Wilson said. Why anyone would think he resembled Keanu Reeves beat him, but he hoped they could go back to the car soon, where he had dry clothes.

"I think we can waive the fine," the woman said with finality, giving her two colleagues a hard stare. They shrugged.

"Oh, and could you take a picture of us, please?" House said with his smarmiest expression, handing the woman his Smartphone. He draped an arm around Wilson's sopping shoulders and grinned at the phone. Wilson smiled weakly.

"For his 'wife', eh?" the surly guard said, glowering at them with homophobic certainty.

"There you go. And have a good time!" the woman said, returning House's Smartphone.

"So what?" they heard her say to her colleagues as they walked away. "_I_ think they were sweet."


	5. Diagnosis

**Christmas 2015**

_The plane is off the ground before Wilson dares to look at Cuddy. "He's got a patient," he says. "You know how he is."_

"_Yes," Cuddy answers shortly._

_Rachel, jammed between them in the middle seat, asks, "How who is?"_

"_Pete," Cuddy says. "When he has to diagnose a patient – to figure out what's wrong with him or her – he forgets everything else."_

"_Oh. Did he forget about us?"_

"_Probably."_

"_Doesn't matter," Rachel says cheerfully. "We found the airport without him, didn't we?"_

"_We certainly did," Wilson says, smiling at her._

_Cuddy rolls her eyes. "She's like my therapist. 'Three things that you did well, Lisa, since our last session'," she quotes. "She calls it 'an exercise in positive thinking, aimed at building up self-esteem'."_

"_That shouldn't be too difficult for you," Wilson says._

"_You'd be surprised at how difficult it can be," Cuddy says darkly, wondering whether Wilson's complimentary statement isn't an insult in disguise._

"_Are we playing the 'three things' game?" Rachel chimes in. "Can I start?" Without waiting for a reply, she continues, "I brushed my teeth this morning."_

"_I should hope so!" Cuddy says. "I don't think that counts."_

"_Without being told to!" Rachel explains. "So I did that well, because you didn't have to keep reminding me to do it."_

"_Oh, all right," Cuddy concedes. "That was good of you. It's my turn. Let me see: I didn't yell at Pete all week, even though he made me want to tear my hair out. … No, wait, that doesn't count, because that wasn't something I _did,_ but something I _didn't_ do. It has to be an active deed, not an omission," she explains to Wilson. "I'll have to rephrase that …"_

"_Come on, Mom," Rachel whines. "You're not allowed to take so long."_

_Cuddy takes a deep breath. "Too much pressure here." She puts in a dramatic pause before saying, "Stated positively, I kept my temper with Pete."_

"_See, that wasn't so difficult," Wilson says in his best amateur therapist manner._

"_Your turn, Wilson."_

"_I remembered to call House 'Pete'," Wilson says._

"_So what?" Rachel promptly counters. "So did I - it's no biggie."_

"_You don't get to question the other players' achievements," Cuddy says._

"_It's an achievement for me because I've been calling him House the past, oh, twenty years, and it's difficult to change old habits," Wilson explains to Rachel. "Anyway, it's your turn."_

"_I played with Wilson every day," Rachel says, giving her mother a challenging stare. Both adults can't help smiling._

"_Yes, that's an achievement, considering I'm rotten at all of your games," Wilson concurs. "Cuddy?"_

"_I entrusted Rachel to the hotel's babysitting service for two whole hours!"_

"_And she survived!" Wilson says with a hint of sarcasm. Cuddy reaches across Rachel to slap his shoulder playfully._

"_I did my homework assignments. That's three things for me!" Rachel crows, holding up three fingers. _

_Wilson generously overlooks that she's taken his turn, while Cuddy gives her a hard stare. "Your homework is nowhere near done," she says._

"_You don't get to question other players' cheesements – whatever that word was!" Rachel parrots her mother's earlier statement._

"Achievements_," Cuddy corrects. "Oh, okay! Wilson, you've still got two 'cheesements' open."_

"_Wilson, can I have your iPad?" Rachel asks hopefully, losing interest in their game now that her part is done._

"_Sure." Wilson retrieves it from the backpack at his feet and hands it to Rachel. Then he turns back to Cuddy, frowning in concentration. "Staying off the booze doesn't count?" he asks hopefully._

_Cuddy shakes her head, smirking. "Not unless you can bend it to give it an active spin."_

_Wilson is quiet for a moment. "I took a day off to do some sight-seeing by myself," he says rather self-consciously._

_Cuddy smiles warmly. "That's good! You don't have to babysit him, you know."_

_Wilson sighs, massaging his forehead. "I know. It's just so frustrating, watching him struggle with his work environment, doing all the stuff that used to get him fired over and over again. And yet, when I tell him he'll get himself fired, he doesn't believe me or he doesn't care. I'm not sure which it is."_

"_I've persuaded Dr Wesley to give Pete a team," Cuddy says._

_Wilson's mouth drops open. He had no idea that Cuddy has been fraternising with the enemy. "How'd you do that?"_

"_I went to see him yesterday and made a few 'suggestions'."_

"_You … told him how to do his job? And he didn't tell you to – what do they say here? – to 'sod off'?"_

"_Of course I didn't tell him how to do his job!" Cuddy says unconvincingly. "I merely mentioned a few do's and don'ts, which he'll probably ignore. But he was much too polite to say so or to tell me to mind my own business. He offered me cookies and tea and even said that it was lovely talking to me!" She gives Wilson a look that says, _So there!

"_Then what makes you think he'll give House – sorry, Pete – a team?"_

"_Oh, he sent me an email today saying that once he's got the funding sorted out, Pete will get his fellows. I guess the team was the only one of my concepts that Wesley understood: I doubt he grasped my meaning when I told him not to let Pete get bored or make him do things he doesn't want to do."_

"_Wow, that's – great! Definitely something for your 'things I did well' list." Wilson rubs his upper lip in thought. Finally he says, "I can't think of a third thing."_

"_You put up with us for a whole week without complaint, even though you'd have had a better time without us. I'd never have managed this," Cuddy nods at Rachel who, absorbed in a game, is oblivious to the adults, "without you."_

_Wilson looks confused. "I'd have had 'a better time without you'? Cuddy, I enjoyed myself. I enjoyed being with you and Rachel. This wasn't a sacrifice!"_

"_See? Sometimes you don't even notice the good you do for others."_

* * *

**April 2016**

"Thymoma," Candidate #5 said confidently. "Malignant; stage II, type B2, I'd say, but I'd need a biopsy to narrow it down. The cough could be unrelated, but in view of the size of the tumour it's unlikely. The tumour is definitely pressing on the oesophagus."

He passed the scans and blood test results over to House and looked to Wilson for confirmation. His smile faded when he saw Wilson's expression. His eyes flickered to and fro between Wilson and House, a wary expression on his face. "You – didn't know, Dr Wilson?"

Wilson rubbed the back of his neck. House, immersed in the scans with his forehead furrowed, didn't react at all. The initial low rumble that had risen among the other candidates died down into a shocked silence.

"I'm … I'm sorry," the candidate said awkwardly, looking from House to Wilson and back again. "I assumed that you knew the diagnosis already and that you were just testing us."

"_I assumed!_" House mimicked him, rolling his eyes dramatically. "The two words that preface every imaginable stupidity." To the room at large he said, "These scans suck. Can't see the extent of the tumour. We need detailed scans of the lungs, the pericardium, and the surrounding blood vessels, and a biopsy."

There was no movement in the room. Wilson stared at a spot on the wall, wondering why the white paint was pulsating in such an annoying manner. And then there was this buzzing in his ears that drowned out most of what House was yelling at his candidates.

"Schedule the scans – yes, you, you moron! … Tomorrow at eight. … Go!"

Tinnitus, on top of his cold and the thymoma. No, he was being silly; he didn't have a cold, just a thymoma. Which was good, he supposed: he wouldn't have to deal with a cold in addition to having cancer.

'Always look on the bright side of life!' Monty Python sang in his head.

––––-

House pored over the CT scans, his chin cradled on one hand, the other hand tapping a pencil rhythmically on his desk. Wilson, standing at the window of the office and looking down at the traffic with sightless eyes, rubbed his sternum. Now that he knew the reason for the soreness, that unrelenting pressure in his chest, he was surprised that he hadn't come to the right conclusion himself.

"Stage II," House finally said, looking at Wilson with an inscrutable expression.

Wilson had figured that much out.

After a pause House continued, "It's a big, fat bastard, but it hasn't reached the mediastinal pleura. Complete resection of the thymus should do the job. There's no need for radiation or chemo."

Doubtless.

"You should get a biopsy done when you get back to the States," House added after another silence. (He'd cancelled the biopsy that morning after considering the medical implications of doing an invasive procedure on someone who should fly back home as soon as possible.)

Yes, he should.

House's limited supply of patience was evidently exhausted. "Wilson, don't be an idiot. You're an oncologist. You know that thymoma, _stage II thymoma_, is not a death sentence. Currently, survival rates lie at over 80%."

"For the next five years. After that …"

"Survival rates based on the treatment available five years ago or longer. Your odds are better, given the advances in the field. Have you re-scheduled your flight back?"

Wilson stared at him blankly. He felt numb, listless. Why would he want to …? Oh, yes, he needed to get back to the States to get the biopsy done. "Not yet."

House rose, making a shooing motion with his hands. "Then go, do!"

House had a meeting with the hospital administration, probably about his new team, so Wilson went back to the hotel by himself. He sank down on the bed, his head in his hands.

When he looked up again, the light in the room had changed. He rose heavily and got his travel documents out of the hotel safe.

"Hello? My name is James Wilson, booking code PNKR25."

"One moment," the cool female voice at the other end said. "BA 0173 London Heathrow to New York JFK, on April 24, is that right?"

"Yes."

"What can I do for you, Dr Wilson?"

"I …" Wilson's throat was dry. "I need to reschedule my flight. What's the earliest flight I can take?"

"Let me see. … I can offer you a seat on a flight this evening at 8 p.m., check-in is two hours earlier. Would that suit you?"

He looked at the clock. "Yes, that would be fine."

"All right, I'm booking you on BA 0183 from Heathrow at 8 p.m. You should get a confirmation email in a few moments."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No. No, thank you." He hung up.

He got up and walked aimlessly around the hotel room, tossing odds and ends onto the bed for later packing – the adapter and charger for his cell phone, the latest Bill Bryson that he'd bought at the airport on the way down, a souvenir T-shirt he'd bought for Rachel, his travel guide. Then he phoned the front desk to tell them he'd be checking out in an hour.

House didn't call.

He decided to take a shower. Perhaps that would help him to concentrate, to shake off that stifling feeling that everything was closing in on him.

After the shower he still had half an hour to kill. He pulled out his clothes and stacked them on the bed, folded his shirts, got his toothbrush and his shaving kit out of the bathroom, checked through all the drawers and under the bed.

House still hadn't called. Wilson tried calling him, but House's phone went straight to voicemail. Wilson hesitated, breathing seconds of silence onto voicemail before telling House to call him back. Then he texted Cuddy to tell her he was returning.

He tossed his things into his suitcase, throwing the neatly folded shirts in haphazardly among boxer shorts and socks, knowing as he did so that he'd hate himself for his slovenliness when he unpacked his suitcase in New York.

He was in the cab when House finally returned his call.

"You're where?"

"On the way to the airport," Wilson repeated patiently, leaning his head against the backrest with his eyes closed. "My flight is leaving at eight."

"That's – great!" House said.

"I suppose so."

"Are you gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," Wilson said, infusing his voice with energy that he didn't feel. "Sure. The sooner I get back, the sooner this will be over."

"Need me to come to the airport?" House asked.

Wilson could hear the reluctance in House's voice, so he said what was expected of him, as he always did. "No, I'll be fine. And you'll be over in five weeks anyway, won't you?"

"Yeah, I'll see you in Baltimore in May." After a short awkward silence he disconnected the call.

Wilson stared at the phone in his hands, observing the slight unsteadiness in his hands as he held it. He was not going to cry, he was so not going to cry! There was no reason to cry: he was going back home to get his thymoma checked out, and by the time House came to hold a talk at that conference in Baltimore, he'd have had the tumour resectioned and be fit as a fiddle, and they'd both laugh at the memory of the applicant's face when he'd realised that Wilson hadn't known about his cancer.

But at the moment it didn't feel funny at all.


	6. Wilson's Secret

**A/N: **A big thanks to my guest reviewers and to everyone who has favourited or followed me.

* * *

**May 2016**

"You're what?" Cuddy said inelegantly.

"Retiring," Arthur Rosenbaum repeated. "I'm sorry to spring it on you like this, Lisa, but – I have my reasons. Mabel …" He paused, sighing and staring out of the window. "Mabel hasn't been well lately."

_You can't do this to me! I can't handle it yet – you were supposed to stay another two years, until Rachel turns ten!_ Cuddy screamed silently as she formed her features into something less akin to panic and closer to eager interest. "I'm sorry to hear that," she heard herself say. "I hope it's nothing serious." _Of course it's something serious if he's retiring because of it!_

"Dementia," Rosenbaum said briefly. He gave her a pained smile. "We've decided to be pro-active about it and inform our friends and family, so that she can have as active a life as is possible under the circumstances."

"That's great, and very brave," Cuddy said, calling up a mental image of Mabel Rosenbaum. A short pretty woman of no more than fifty-five, she estimated. Dementia at that age – what a diagnosis! When had she last seen her? She hadn't been at the Christmas party or at the last fundraiser.

"I've talked to the chairman about it and to HR: you are to take over as interim dean until the board confirms your appointment as my successor."

"Thanks," Cuddy murmured. She schooled her expression to mirror a delicate mixture of commiseration for Rosenbaum's personal problems and muted delight at the position being offered to her.

Rosenbaum held up a warning hand. "That could take some time since hospital policy demands that the post be publicly advertised."

"So I may not get it," Cuddy stated. This was bad news. She was way past the age where she'd be considered a dynamic and innovative candidate for the post; her main asset was her experience as former dean of PPTH, whereas her present post as head of Family and Community Healthcare didn't carry much clout.

"Oh, I don't think you'll have much competition. You have years of experience, and your efficiency is much appreciated," Rosenbaum said benignly.

But then, he'd hardly tell her that she was to keep his chair warm for someone else for an indeterminate period of time, after which she would be relegated to the sidelines again. If he did, she'd hand in her resignation, as he well knew, and go looking for greener pastures. She mightn't be able to land a top administrative post, but a position similar to her present one should be well within her grasp.

"I'll be announcing my resignation in a week's time; my contract obliges me to give at least two months' notice, but I'm counting on you …"

Cuddy zoned out. This was exactly the sort of situation she'd striven to avoid. Rosenbaum wanted her to take over straightaway, with no on-the-job training at all. Once she was interim dean, she'd have to keep her own department running, because they wouldn't find a successor for her there until she'd officially gotten the job as dean. _If_ she got the job, because if she didn't, she'd be putting in months of double workload, all for the doubtful pleasure of handing over a well-organised hospital to the lucky bastard who did get the job.

But if she refused the post, that would be it. She'd spend the rest of her life holding talks at local high schools about safer sex and contraception, distributing fliers on the benefits of vaccinations, and trying to sweet talk the board into increasing the funding for her perpetually understaffed clinic.

She got home without noticing where she was driving, her prefrontal cortex compiling lists of things to do: people to contact, appointments to schedule, responsibilities to delegate, and so on. She couldn't send Rachel to stay with Julia because she'd miss school, but maybe she could go to Emma's place after school for the next one or two weeks; she'd up her household help's working hours for a few months and she could employ a student nurse to babysit a few times per week. With a bit of supervision her deputy should be able to run her department. She'd reduce department meetings to a bare minimum for the next month and her assistant would have to take over the unloved task of preparing her budgeting. That was what assistants were for, wasn't it?

Wilson was in the kitchen, sorting dishes from the dishwasher back into her cupboards. She paused at the door, watching him. Wilson was another source of perpetual worry. She'd persuaded him to come over to Philly for the weekend before driving down to Baltimore, a wise move judging by what she'd seen the last forty-eight hours, but not one calculated to increase her peace of mind.

Wilson looked up, probably alerted to her presence by the whirring noise the cogs in her head were making.

"Shouldn't you be on your way to Baltimore?" she asked.

"I'm not going," he said.

Cuddy looked at him enquiringly.

"To the airport to pick House up," Wilson elucidated.

That was – unexpected. Unless, of course, Wilson was being sensible about driving in his present state. She entered the kitchen and moved casually to the sink right next to him. His eyes were clear, but there was a faint whiff of alcohol emanating from him.

"_I_ can drive," Cuddy offered, mentally compiling a list of arrangements to be made before she could leave for Baltimore. Rachel would have to spend the night at her neighbour Louisa's place. Then she'd need to buy gas, and oh, she was supposed to phone her lawyer, but she could do that from the car. And damn, she'd been hoping to get the groceries done this evening, but she guessed they could survive off the contents of her freezer for another day. But how would they get Wilson's car to Baltimore if he drove down with her now and stayed there? Because _she_ had no intention of doing more than dropping him off; she wouldn't foist her presence on Pete. If he wanted to see her, he'd have to say so – a glaring omission on his part so far.

"Thanks, but there's no need. I … I don't feel up to it."

Cuddy stared at him. "You've been looking forward to Pete's visit for months, you've taken the week off to have time for him, and now you tell me you don't feel up to it?"

Wilson wouldn't meet her eyes. "I've been tired and run-down all week. I think I should take it easy," he finally said. "And you know that House won't take it easy."

Cuddy backed down. Wilson was somewhat pale, and he had lost weight. Then there was that persistent cough of his. He insisted that he'd caught it jumping into some pond in England, but that had been _weeks_ ago. He really should get it looked into, but Wilson had always had the tendency to neglect his own health, focusing his attention on other people's ailments instead.

"When are you going down to Baltimore then?" she asked, thinking that if he was staying another night or two, he might as well put in a visit to Nolan the next day. She had contacted Nolan the moment she'd realised that Wilson had relapsed, and although Nolan had refused to get involved as long as the initiative didn't come from Wilson, he had indicated that he'd fit Wilson in at short notice as soon as Wilson showed an inclination to seek help.

Wilson sat down at the table and studied his hands. "I think I'll drive back to New York tomorrow, if that's okay with you."

Cuddy sucked in a sharp breath.

"I can also leave now, if you'd prefer," Wilson added, misinterpreting her reaction – probably deliberately, she decided.

She sat down opposite him, propping her chin on her hand. "What's going on here?" she asked.

"Nothing," Wilson said evasively. "I haven't been in to work all that regularly lately, and I need to show my face there more often. I'm not a maverick like House, who can afford to come and go as he pleases."

Now that she came to think of it, Wilson had at no point said that he was spending the weekend with her in order to facilitate his trip to Baltimore. She'd invited him over assuming that he'd want to kill two birds with one stone, but he'd accepted her invitation without commenting on his further plans. True, he hadn't expressly denied that he'd go to Baltimore to meet up with Pete, but neither had he stated that he'd do so.

She came to a quick decision. "It's no problem; the sheets are still on your bed in the guest room. You can stay for as long as you like."

"Thanks."

"No problem." She got up. "There's some lasagna in the fridge – don't wait for me."

Wilson gaped at her. "Where are you going?"

"Baltimore."

––––––––––––––-

His suitcase was larger than cabin baggage was supposed to be, but he'd played the cripple card by exaggerating his limp and twirling his running prosthetic, the Ossur blade, very blatantly in front of the check-in desk, so he was one of the first to exit the baggage return area. As a result, he wasn't really surprised not to spot Wilson, even though he had him down as someone who'd come to the airport well in advance, park his car in a remote corner of the parking deck so that no one would scrape his paint, suss out the arrival area, and position himself where he couldn't be overlooked. Then again, maybe Wilson had come so early that he'd opted for a cup of coffee and was now being entrapped by some well-endowed barista.

He'd just put down his suitcase in order to search his pocket for the address of his conference hotel when a well-known voice hailed him.

"Pete!" Lisa, slightly out of breath, was hurrying towards him. He hadn't spotted her earlier because he'd been scanning the crowds roughly ten inches above her head. She was dressed casually in jeans and flat shoes, which was unflattering but unsurprising. If anything was surprising, it was her presence here. Not to mention awkward.

"Where's Wilson?" Wilson was supposed to meet him at the airport and stay for the conference. He'd booked a flexible ticket back to London so as to be able to extend his stay for as long as Wilson had time for him …

"Good to see you too," Lisa said drily, not even trying to hug him. So Wilson had told her about Gail. She finally settled for a quick squeeze of his arm before turning away to the terminal exit.

He trailed behind her, trying to gauge her mood from what he could see of her, which wasn't much. She was marching at a rapid pace (_"I was in a rush, so the car's in a no-parking zone"_) a few steps in front of him, so he only had her stance and her movements from which to draw his conclusions. She was late and Wilson wasn't here, so something must have gone wrong. No emergency, because she wasn't emotional or haggard, merely tense. But whatever it was, it was upsetting her over and above what was to be expected, even taking into consideration that she was here to pick up her ex-ex-boyfriend. (Or was it ex-ex-ex-boyfriend? He was beginning to lose count.) She'd relaxed instead of stiffening further on seeing him, almost as though she was relieved to see him here. So whatever the crisis, it wasn't connected to him. There was, however, the unnerving possibility that she expected help from him, otherwise why be relieved at the sight of him? In fact, it was practically a given that she wanted something from him, because even idiots who'd fried their hippocampus to the extent that they could hardly find their own bathroom without GPS didn't need to be escorted from the airport to a hotel located in the same city.

He tried again when they went through the doors of the terminal and out into the mild May evening. "Why are you picking me up?"

"Because Wilson is in no state to drive," she answered shortly.

He digested this. Had there been complications after Wilson's operation? It struck him that he had no idea when Wilson's resection had taken place. Wilson had been pretty uncommunicative recently, but he'd put it down to the stress of having to deal with the thymoma. (Besides, he'd been distracted himself.) Had some idiot doctor put him on chemo instead of resecting the tumour? Wilson was an oncologist of note, but even doctors were idiots about their own health. He amended that: doctors _especially_ were idiots about their health.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

Lisa swung round to face him, stopping him short. "I was hoping _you_ could tell me that," she said.

"Who, me?" he said, his innocence not faked for a change.

"He toppled off his flight from London three days before he was due to return, plastered to the gills, and he has been drinking ever since," Lisa snapped. "You want me to believe that this hasn't got anything to do with you?" She stared at him accusingly.

Drinking? Oh, crap! But was this his fault? Pete resolutely blocked out the memory of his last conversation with Wilson before Wilson's departure. Wilson had called to inform him that he'd booked a flight back to New York that evening at eight, and he'd asked whether he'd see Pete again before he left. But he'd had tickets for the opera; they'd cost a mint, and Gail loved Puccini …

He tried to ignore the jolt in the pit of his stomach when he thought of Gail, focusing on Lisa instead. "It wouldn't have anything to do with his thymoma," he countered sarcastically.

Lisa's eyes widened. "Thymoma? Wilson?" she said. "Are you sure? … How do you know?"

"Diagnosed him," he said shortly. "Well, technically my job applicants diagnosed him, but since they weren't employed by the hospital at that point, I guess it counts as my diagnosis."

Lisa rubbed her forehead. "How bad is it?"

Pete grimaced. "We didn't do a biopsy, but judging by the scans it was Stage I or II. He's an oncologist; he knows what he's doing," he added, not allowing his unease at the news of Wilson's relapse and his absence at the airport to surface.

"He didn't tell me," Lisa said. "I thought you and he had some sort of misunderstanding, but this?" She gestured helplessly. "Why wouldn't he tell me?"

"Why would he?" Pete asked. "You'd probably nag at him to stop drinking – even more than you already do – and be twenty sorts of irritating." Since Lisa still looked worried he added, "He's probably taken care of it and doesn't want you to get your panties all in a twist about a fairly harmless tumour that has excellent survival rates."

Lisa looked unconvinced, but dropped the topic – for the moment.

In the car Lisa took the slip of paper with his hotel's address from him, programmed it into the Satnav, and drew away from the curb without any further comment. She was deep in thought all the way to the conference venue, her only utterances a few expletives directed at other drivers.

He didn't mind; Wilson's relapse was enough food for thought, because no matter what he'd said to Lisa, he had a bad feeling about this. A simple resection should have done the job, but now he came to think of it, Wilson had been oddly silent about his carcinoma in their few recent communications, and Lisa would have noticed if he'd gone MIA for a few days to get the procedure done. Then again, maybe she wouldn't. Philly wasn't exactly next door to New York, and they probably didn't see each other all that regularly.

At the hotel she handed her car keys to the valet and followed him inside. He wasn't surprised; she had driven over from Philly with an agenda that undoubtedly included browbeating him into having a heart-to-heart with Wilson about his drinking, and she was unlikely to give up on that just because Wilson's case had just proved to have a further level of suckotage.

He got his room key and his conference package from reception and turned to Lisa. "I'm taking my stuff upstairs," he said.

She nodded. "I'll wait for you in the bar."

He didn't hurry; he unpacked, took a longish shower, inspected the contents of the mini bar, fortified himself with bourbon, and then went down again. Eyeing the hotel's front entrance he briefly considered making a run for it, but jet lag was beginning to kick in and he probably couldn't avoid Lisa forever. So he made his way to the bar where a decidedly pissed Lisa was sitting on a stool, nursing something that looked disgustingly non-alcoholic. He slid onto the stool next to her.

"I've been hit on by at least three creeps," she remarked. "You'd think they attend conferences for the sole purpose of picking up women for one-night stands."

"Is there any other purpose?" he asked, giving her the once-over.

"Let's not even pretend that this isn't important for your career," Lisa said, ignoring his leer. It was his first conference since his reinvention; if he did well here, it would cement his shaky standing in the medical community. "You're a brilliant talker when you put your mind to it," she added, placing her hand on his forearm as though sensing the nervousness he was sure he was concealing well.

He stared down at her hand, not sure whether he wanted to allow himself to be reassured or whether he'd rather eschew the comfort and the closeness that the gesture implied. Lisa gave his arm a quick squeeze, and then withdrew her hand, sparing him the bother of making a decision.

The barkeeper brought him his drink, a double whisky. He'd anticipated Lisa's disapproval – to be honest, irritating her had been one of the items on his agenda when ordering the drink – and he supposed she had a point. As an addict he should be keeping a close eye on his intake of potentially intoxicating substances, but hey, he wasn't a saint. And life sucked.

"How's work?" Lisa asked innocently.

He stared at her suspiciously, but her expression was bland. She had no idea that she was rubbing salt into an open wound. He opted for deflection. "Practicing your small-talk skills on me in anticipation of your future position as dean?" he asked.

"Small talk is like driving: you don't forget it, and I had fifteen years at PPTH to hone my skills."

They were silent again, Pete sipping his whisky with a constancy engendered less by the quality of the drink than by the desire to be solidly plastered before he had to face a lonely hotel room. If Wilson had been here … but he wasn't, so there was nothing much else to do.

Lisa twisted and turned her glass. "He's hiding something," she finally said. "If he's had the resection done and everything is fine, then why didn't he tell me anything about it? And why is he still coughing?"

"Maybe he's on chemo to shrink the tumour before they do the resection: it was a pretty big bastard." That didn't explain why he was keeping Lisa in the dark. Thymoma was no big deal as far as cancers went. Maybe he'd gone for some experimental treatment, something that would worry Lisa. But Wilson was not the type for experiments. He was your poster boy for safe, proven, 'what's good enough for everyone else is good enough for me' medicine.

"In that case he shouldn't be drinking," Lisa stated, apparently forgetting that Wilson shouldn't be drinking anyway. But she was right: the thymoma treatment protocol recommended cisplatin in combination with doxorubicin, and the latter wasn't exactly easy on the liver. "If I manage to bring Wilson here, will you talk sense into him?"

"Sure," he said, not meaning it. He'd worry about talking to Wilson if and when Lisa managed to drag him to Baltimore. "What makes you think he'll heed my good advice? It's not like I practice what you want me to preach." He lifted his drink in a mock salute, emptied his glass and signalled to the barkeeper for another one, ignoring the first hints of wooziness. He should have eaten something before going for the on-board drinks, he supposed.

Lisa was sitting very straight, very tense. She tapped her fingernails against her glass. "I get why Wilson wouldn't be keeping you updated on his thymoma, but that doesn't explain why you haven't been keeping tabs on him."

"He's a big boy; he can look after himself. Oh, and what was the name of that famous oncologist again?" He rubbed his chin as though pondering the question. "Weston? Watson? No, I think it was Wilson, James Wilson."

She gave a low, incredulous laugh. "Pete, you're the nosiest person I've ever met. I can't even count the number of times you've hacked into my computer and I know you did the same with Wilson's. There's no way you'd stay off his back after diagnosing him, unless …."

Struck by a sudden thought she examined him intently. She was going to come to one of her irritating conclusions in a moment, the same way Wilson did regularly, and it bugged the hell out of him. It wasn't that either of them was particularly good at putting two and two together; they just benefitted from years spent observing him coupled with a few lucky guesses. If he couldn't shut her up, he could at least shut her out. He toasted her mockingly with his glass before tipping it down his throat in one gulp, a gesture that he regretted instantly.

Lisa regarded him with a hint of mockery in her otherwise grim smile. The smile faded when he raised a hand to catch the barkeeper's attention. "This isn't just about Wilson," she surmised thoughtfully. "You aren't getting wasted because of Wilson, because you weren't sober when you reached here, _before_ you knew he wasn't coming."

Definitely time to distract her. He propped his chin on his hand so he could leer comfortably down her top. "Could we talk about something more pleasant?" he suggested.

"Like getting you up to your room?" Lisa suggested, intercepting his drink and giving the barkeeper a glare. She rose, tugging at his elbow.

"Sounds great," he said with a lecherous grin and rose in turn, his irritation at being deprived of his liquor receding as he considered the possibility of getting into her pants. True, she wasn't escorting him up with the intention of landing in the sheets with him, but intentions could change and resolves could alter. Lisa hadn't been good at resisting him the last time he'd been in the US.

As he straightened, however, the ground under his feet shifted disconcertingly, and he was forced to cling to Lisa tighter than he'd intended. He quickly masked his steadying grip as a grope, but judging by her eye roll she wasn't fooled. She dug one hand into the back pocket of his pants ("Whoa, not so fast!" he said), pulled out his wallet, and tossed a bill onto the counter. Then she draped his arm over her shoulders and steered him towards the elevator.

Once inside, he let his hands roam further down, but she untangled herself, pushing him back.

"Keep your hands to yourself," she said. "God, you're wasted!"

Really, he wasn't as drunk as Lisa thought he was; as a matter of fact he was just a little tipsy, nicely blurred around the edges.

"Which room number?" Lisa asked.

He drew the key card out of his pocket and handed it to her. Those electronic key cards could be tricky things even when you were stone-cold sober. She marched out of the elevator and down the corridor, not waiting to see if he was following her. By the time he caught up with her – bloody death trap, that carpeting, for people with prosthetics! – she'd swiped the key card through the slot in the door and was holding it open for him.

"Bed for you, I think," Lisa said in a tone that broached no argument.

Damn, but she was sexy when she was bossy. And 'bed' was absolutely the right cue. Instead of moving towards the bed (or the bathroom, which was where he really needed to go) he embraced her clumsily, nuzzling her neck while his hands roamed down to her ass.

Lisa huffed an annoyed, "Pete!" at him, tugged his hands off her ass and pushed him away at arm's length, from which distance she contemplated him. "What's going on?" she asked.

Did they really have to talk? She used to be eager enough to do the dirty with him; what was her issue now? "What does it look like to you?" he asked.

"She's dumped you," Lisa stated. "Your colleague, the tall red-head."

"Look, if you're going to keep talking, you can go."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing," he muttered, his eyes sliding away to a spot on the wall. Why did everyone believe it was always his fault?

Lisa bit her lip worriedly. "She found out about – how you lost your leg?"

Nice euphemism for 'nearly killed your ex-girlfriend'! "She's not an idiot – though you could say she was insane to date me – and my reputation preceded me. She checked me out on the internet before she took up with me."

Lisa tipped her head sideways, scrutinising him. "_You_ dumped _her_," she said. "Oh, Pete!"

He searched her face for condemnation, but found commiseration there instead. He didn't need that. What kind of weird was that, anyway, to pity him if he'd ended the relationship rather than if he'd been kicked out on his sorry ass? Besides, the facts were different. "She found someone else, okay?"

Lisa looked plain incredulous. "What?"

Her amazement at his simple explanation was flattering, but what was so surprising about an attractive woman deciding that she deserved someone better? He flopped down on the bed, swung his legs up, crossed his ankles and clasped his hands beside his head. "It happens."

"Not to _you_," Lisa said with conviction.

"I believe it's happened before," he said pointedly.

"Neither Stacy nor I left you for another guy," Lisa said. "We left you because of _you_." She sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed a little self-consciously. "I didn't notice other guys when I was with you, and I doubt Stacy did."

She wasn't going to let this go without an explanation, so he said, "The Prodigal Husband came home," and shrugged nonchalantly, as though this wasn't much of a deal.

"Wilson said her husband left her for a student of his," Lisa half asked. He nodded. Lisa's face scrunched up in disgust. "He screws a woman half her age right under her nose, and then she takes him back?"

"'He drives a car through her house, and she takes him back?'" he mocked, imitating her. She merely rolled her eyes.

He contemplated his fingernails. "Twenty years of shared history, two kids, and a house. Can't blame her." He felt her hand on his shin, squeezing gently.

He looked at her; that was a mistake, he quickly realised. Her eyes were shining with sympathy, but that was the last thing he needed now. He didn't want to think about Gail; he wanted distraction, and she'd already denied him his liquor. He leaned forward and twisted a lock of her hair around one of his fingers, pulling her face towards his until it was almost close enough for him to kiss her. She pulled back sharply.

"This – is no solution," she said, rolling her hand.

"It's a great solution," he contradicted her. "We both have fun. And a happy ending." He waggled his eyebrows at her.

"You've got to be kidding."

"I'm always serious about sex."

"Pete," she said, rising from the bed, "I'm not a consolation prize, someone you go to bed with when you can't have the woman you want." She stared down at him, biting her lip. "If there's no more to this than rebound sex, then …"

"There isn't," he said with intentional brutality.

The effect was all that he could have desired. She turned on her heels and left the room.


	7. Confrontation and Consultation

It was a two hour drive back to Philly, which should have given her more than enough time to get herself sorted before she had to face Wilson, but the first half hour or so passed in a blur. She had crossed the Susquehanna and was approaching Wilmington before her brain would do anything but cough up disconnected facts on thymoma, such as the rate of incidence in the general population (which was neither here nor there, since Wilson had somehow managed to garner this rare species), progression (slow), survival rates (she didn't have those at her fingertips, but if she remembered correctly the prognosis was generally pretty good), and treatment (resection for the most part). She couldn't for the life of her remember whether adjuvant radiotherapy was indicated or what combination of drugs was recommended for chemo. Thymoma was simply too rare for its treatment to be a common subject of conversation in the doctors' lounge.

_You're evading the issue_, she scolded herself. _Wilson will have all the facts at his fingertips, even if he's choosing to ignore them._

And that brought her back to the crux of the matter: Wilson. She hadn't been quite truthful with Pete regarding Wilson's absence tonight, partly out of consideration for his feelings and partly to avoid the repercussions for Wilson for as long as possible. For Wilson hadn't been too wasted to drive to Baltimore, although no one in their senses would have given him their car keys in view of his current propensity to end the evening in a bar. He had flatly refused to go collect Pete (or 'House', as Wilson had reverted to calling him) from the airport. Extrapolating from her past experience of their chequered relationship and his present intransigence, Cuddy had assumed that something or other that Pete had said or done had hurt Wilson to the point that he'd given up on their friendship. (_Once again_, she'd muttered to herself, grabbing her own car keys and rushing to drop Rachel off at the neighbour's place.) But past experience had also taught Cuddy that Wilson tended to snap out of his 'House peeves' sooner or later, and the less Pete knew about Wilson rejection, the easier it would be to glue the pieces together again. Pre-amnesia House had both needed and loved Wilson sufficiently to put up with the occasional roller coaster ride that Wilson had put both of them through, but Cuddy wasn't sure whether Pete felt that same irresistible tug towards his former friend. Even if he did, getting him to make overtures of peace would be an uphill battle. Far better to sit it out while limiting the damage they did to each other.

On the drive down to the airport she'd tried to figure out how to get the two men in her life close enough to each other that she'd be able to bash their heads together nice and hard. That was when she'd still believed that Wilson was sulking because Pete was neglecting him, a misconception to which Wilson had undoubtedly contributed his mite. When he'd toppled off the flight from London (escorted by a very pissed flight attendant) the only reason he'd given for his early return had been that Pete was too busy screwing willowy Irish psychologists to bother about him. It had sounded as though Pete had ignored him completely, leaving him to his own devices until he'd sought solace in alcohol and an early return. Oh, wily Wilson! She hadn't even suspected that the cause for Wilson's misery lay within himself.

She still wanted to bash their heads against something or other. Honestly, what was Wilson thinking, neglecting his thymoma for weeks? And surely Pete, as a former addict, knew better than to seek refuge in alcohol! But more than that, she wanted to scream out her rage at a deity in whose existence she hardly believed, and maybe she was gripping the steering wheel so hard because she'd like to clamp her hands around a certain psychologist's pale neck.

Screaming and raging, however, wasn't going to get her anywhere; she needed to prioritise.

Item 1 on the list: Pete's relationship problems.

There was nothing she could do about Pete's heartache except feel sorry for him, a sentiment that he'd resent, so it was best to file it away as a given. He'd get over it. _("Except, he never does," a Wilson-like voice noted.)_

Item 2: his alcohol consumption.

It was worrying; he was in danger of sliding back into old patterns. But it would keep – he'd always been good at snapping out of downright harmful habits if some other distraction caught his attention. _("Except for the times he didn't snap out of them," the Wilson-voice reminded her, but she quickly shushed it.)_

That left item 3: Wilson's cancer and the stand-off between Wilson and Pete.

Was Wilson ignoring his cancer because he felt neglected, or was he pushing Pete away because he wanted to be left in peace to deal with his illness as he pleased?

_Let's not get ourselves involved in 'chicken or egg' debates,_ she told herself sternly. It didn't really matter which problem she tackled first; if she managed to solve one problem, the other would most likely dissolve into thin air. Getting those two divas to talk to each other could take months; knocking sense into Wilson's head shouldn't take more than a few minutes. That was, if they were talking of bog-standard stage I thymoma here. Five weeks was a long time, but thymoma wasn't a particularly aggressive cancer. Even if it took her another four or five weeks to talk Wilson into sense and sobriety, he'd be fine.

Or wouldn't he? There had been something in Pete's expression – dismay? panic? – that had been at odds with his casual 'stage I or II' diagnosis.

At her apartment block she walked past the elevator and headed straight for the stairs. She lived on the top floor, but since she always had to use the elevator when she was with Rachel, the tug in her leg muscles was satisfying rather than annoying. The apartment was dark and quiet when she came back, only a sliver of light under the kitchen door showing that Wilson was still up and waiting for her. She hung up her coat and slipped out of her shoes. Then she stood in the dark hallway tapping her teeth with her forefinger before squaring her shoulders and entering the kitchen. Wilson sat at the table, a mug in front of him, ostensibly leafing through the daily paper. He looked up as she came in, but she didn't say anything, merely walking over to the coffee machine, a long-ago gift of House's. She smiled as she remembered the impropriety of it: House had attempted to outwit karma by 'doing good'.

Wilson, lulled into a false sense of security by her reminiscent smile, asked off-handedly, "So, how is he?"

Cuddy placed a cup under the spout, pressed the button and waited for the grinding and whirring to cease before she turned to Wilson, leaning back against the counter as she gave him a measured glance. "Not so good: that woman of his left him."

Wilson digested this. "That's – unexpected."

"Really?" Cuddy asked abstractedly, her mind elsewhere. Had Wilson been drinking in her absence or had he managed to stay sober? He wasn't visibly drunk, but then, he'd gotten good at concealing all outward signs. She was glad she'd got Rachel to spend the night at Louisa's place; when Wilson lost control completely, he was a loose canon.

Wilson, blissfully oblivious of the fact that he and not Pete was up in the dock, rose to Pete's defence. "He isn't always an ass. He can be different. Not a conventional romantic, but attentive and considerate in his own way."

Cuddy placed her mug on the table and sat down opposite Wilson. "I'm aware of that," she said in measured tones, filing away for later contemplation the information that Wilson didn't expect _her_, Pete's previous girlfriend, to appreciate Pete's romantic potential. "I saw him with Stacy, remember?" She stirred her coffee, looking down into the swirling liquid. "He just couldn't be that way with me."

"Cuddy, that's not what I meant," Wilson protested, visibly distressed. "You – had to combine a work relationship with your private one. It was bound to lead to stress."

Cuddy patted his arm across the table. "Nice try, but I'm not an idiot. You don't need to try to make me feel better; I'm okay with it. I always knew I wasn't his first choice. I was the proverbial straw he was clutching at. That wasn't what split us up, anyway, and Pete's relationship skills aren't up for debate. He lost out to habit: the woman's husband came back."

"How's he coping?"

Cuddy watched Wilson surreptitiously as she stirred her coffee. If the question was a sign of genuine concern, then it meant that Wilson wasn't avoiding Pete because he'd given up on him, but because he wanted to sidestep Pete's peculiar brand of caring. Wilson was fidgeting, fingering the newspaper and creasing its edges, but there was no sign that the question was merely a polite phrase. She leaned forward, placing a soothing hand over his. "When were you planning on telling me about your thymoma?" she asked.

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. "He told you."

"What did you expect?" Cuddy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I dunno; some respect for patient confidentiality, maybe?" Wilson groused, but Cuddy could see his heart wasn't in it.

"You're his friend, not his patient," Cuddy said. Maybe Wilson needed to be reminded that he had a friend.

"He diagnosed me," Wilson said, echoing what Pete had said earlier. "That makes him my physician, I guess."

"So, what are you doing about it?" Cuddy asked casually.

"I got more scans done and a biopsy," Wilson said, looking down at the table.

"And?"

Wilson was silent for a moment. Then he said, "It's too big for a resection."

"So you'll be getting – what? Chemo? Radiation?" Cuddy asked. But she didn't need to wait for Wilson's answer; his expression, guilty and sad, said it all.

"It's thymic carcinoma," he said, adding by way of explanation, "the one that used to be called type C thymoma. The survival rate is nowhere near as good as for other thymomas. I'd need a combination of radiation and chemo to shrink the tumour, and chemo after the resection – that's if the tumour shrinks sufficiently to be operable – and there's no guarantee that it'll go into remission. I'm … not doing it."

"Why not?" Cuddy asked, genuinely puzzled. What Wilson had just described was rigorous for thymoma, but not at all uncommon for other types of cancer. "You're the oncologist; you know better than anyone else …"

"Exactly! I know better than anyone else what it means to go through several rounds of chemo, to be weakened and in utter misery, to spend your days in hospital puking and shivering, having to ask the nurses to change your soiled diapers because you can't make it to the bathroom anymore, to keep on fighting, and for what? In the end, it'll have bought me a few months, but it'll have been a few months of a non-life, time spent in sterile walls among people I don't know.

"I've seen it happen often enough, Cuddy. God forgive me, I've advised my own patients to take that course time and again, hoping I'd buy them some quality time, but as often as not I subjected them to weeks of futile suffering. I'm not doing it."

"But if it works?"

"What then?" Wilson said. "What do I gain?" And he looked at his hands.

She looked at them too. They were bare, not even a tan line remaining from his wedding rings. She got his meaning, but she was unwilling to concede his point. "Wilson, you know that Rachel and I love you and would miss you," she said gently.

"Cuddy, I'm an alcoholic with whom you can't leave your daughter for a single evening. Besides," he held up his hand to stop her protest, "you did fine without me for years. You'll do fine without me when I'm gone."

"And Pete?" Not exactly a trump card under the circumstances, but she had to try.

"House has his own life."

"He's alone again. _And_ something's going on with his job. He wouldn't say anything about it, but I can make an educated guess based on his past employment history."

Wilson buried his face in his hands. From there he said in muffled tones, "Cuddy, I can't make life decisions based on the state of his love life or his work life. His life's a perpetual roller coaster ride, and I'm getting too old for the free fall phases and the loops. I'm getting off the ride."

Cuddy swallowed. "And if you don't get it treated?"

"Eight months, give or take." His calmness sounded rehearsed. It probably was.

A heavy silence hung in the air.

Cuddy changed tack. "You got scans and a biopsy done, so you've got an oncologist. Who are you seeing?"

Wilson avoided her eyes again. "I scheduled them myself." When Cuddy sat back letting out an exasperated breath, he said defensively, "I may not be practicing anymore, but I can still read scans and biopsy results. Based on those, the diagnosis and the prognosis won't change, no matter whom I consult. I've based my decision on facts that I am perfectly capable of interpreting. I don't need someone like me sweet-talking me into something I don't want to do!"

Cuddy rose and put away her cup. Then she contemplated Wilson, who was staring into space looking weary and miserable. Well, she could try to alleviate the misery, and it would buy her some time. "You're welcome to stay here for as long as you like, Wilson. If hospital isn't what you want, I'm sure we can engage a nurse or find a hospice."

"You accept my decision?"

"I can hardly drag you to chemo by your hair, can I?"

"What about Rachel? You don't want her to see me die."

She hadn't considered that. Okay, it would have to be a hospice – if she allowed things to get that far. But she hadn't done fighting yet; this was merely a strategic retreat. "We'll see when we get there," she said.

Wilson looked up, his eyes slightly damp. "Thanks, Lisa," he said as he rose. Then, at the door he turned and pointed a finger at her. "I know what you're planning: you think you can change my mind if you smother me with affection and surround me with family, but it won't work. I'm not changing my mind."

Cuddy waited until she heard the faucet in the bathroom, then she took out her cell and scrolled to Pete's number. It took a long time till he answered the phone, and when he did he sounded anything but happy. But he'd always been capable of snapping in and out of sleep and of functioning even when he was high and drunk, so she saw no reason to postpone this conversation.

"He hasn't had a resection," she said without any sort of prelude. "Nor is he getting chemo or radiation. He isn't doing anything about the damn tumour. It's thymic carcinoma, and he doesn't consider the survival rate high enough to bother with treatment."

There was relative silence at the other end; she could hear huffy breathing and creaking that signified that Pete was sitting up in bed. "Thymic carcinoma has a five-year survival rate of around 40%," Pete finally said. Trust him to have the figures at his fingertips even when he was jet-lagged and suffering from a hangover. "And this couldn't wait till tomorrow?"

"No, it couldn't, because although I've invited him to stay, he could be taking off for New York again any time, and then we won't be able to make him see sense," Cuddy snapped.

"'We'?"

"He is _your_ patient."

"Technically, he wasn't even a patient. He was a 'case study'."

She played her trump card, the 'patient code'. House had felt bound by it to save his patients, no matter how great the personal inconvenience or the costs. "Your team diagnosed him, so that makes him your patient." Maybe not in a legal sense, but she knew how he worked. A patient was his until he passed him on to someone else (or the patient died). He didn't leave patients to fend for themselves.

She could hear him moving around and the gurgle of something being poured into a glass. She hoped it was water. "Well, he is diagnosed, isn't he, and he's an oncologist in his own right. He knows what to do. I don't have to take him by the hand and accompany him to his next appointment."

Good! He hadn't outright refuted the doctor-patient connection.

"He's drinking; he doesn't know what he's doing!"

"Then stop the drinking," Pete said.

"What the hell do you think I've been doing these past four weeks? I've been running interference with his boss to stop him from getting fired – although I guess that doesn't matter anymore – and trying to get him to see Nolan. Nolan says there's nothing he can do unless Wilson comes to him, and Wilson says there's nothing Nolan can do for him. … Oh, I guess Wilson means the thymoma," she said in sudden realisation.

"What meds is he taking?"

The change in topic caught her off guard. "Sorry?" Even if Wilson was on meds, how was she supposed to know what they were?

"Go check!" came the order from Baltimore.

"How am I ….?"

"Woman, that man is anal. If he's taking his meds, then he'll have them well within reach, either in your bathroom or in the guest room."

She stuck her head out of the kitchen. Wilson was still in the bathroom, so she scuttled into the guest room. She opened the drawer of the bedside table, but there was nothing there. She considered his suitcase, but he'd stowed it on top of the closet; she'd need to get a chair to reach it. Next she opened the closet. He'd put a few clothes there and hung up two shirts – enough to get him through the weekend. On one of the shelves he'd placed a bag with a few toiletry articles. And in it was a pill bottle, orange like the ones she'd so often seen House handle. She took it and hurried back to the kitchen, where she closed the door.

"Got it," she said into the phone. "Zoloft."

"Dosage, date of refill, number of pills left?" Pete queried routinely.

Cuddy squinted at the label. "100 mg, about twenty of the fifty pills left, refilled on – oh!"

"Lemme guess: Jimmy hasn't been taking his meds?"

Cuddy did a quick calculation. "Not since he returned from England," she said.

Little explosive pops came from the phone. Cuddy had no idea what they were, but chances were that they were caused by Pete's thinking process.

"Let's say he forgot his meds because he was drunk. He had withdrawal symptoms, didn't recognise them as such (because he was drunk), and self-medicated with more alcohol. Or he decided to do the responsible thing and not mix SSRIs with alcohol," Pete mused aloud.

Cuddy snorted.

Pete clicked his tongue. "Or maybe the combination of alcohol and Zoloft makes him feel funny in a not-so-good way, so he tells himself every day, '_Tomorrow_ I'll stop drinking and then I'll take my meds again,' but tomorrow never comes."

"Thing is," Pete continued, "when you stop taking your SSRIs against the doctor's advice, it doesn't improve your outlook on life. Makes everything seem bleak and hopeless, especially cancer treatment. Gotta get him back on the meds."

"So it boils down to his quitting the booze," Cuddy said with a sinking feeling. She couldn't help remembering how long his previous stay in Mayfield had been. How long would it take for Wilson to feel well enough to take his fate into his own hands again?

Pete practically echoed her thoughts. "If he's got the time for that. I need his scans, recent scans," he demanded.

"I'm sure he has a set in his suitcase," Cuddy said sarcastically.

"They'll be in his medical records, and those are bound to be stored in digital format on some hospital server or other, depending on where he got them done."

"Well, I haven't got access to those either."

"Has he brought a laptop?"

"Yes, but … Pete, I can't even hack into Rachel's account when she forgets her password, much less into Wilson's. Wilson may not be a computer nerd, but in the years with you he learned to protect all his accounts."

There was silence at the other end. Doubtless Pete's former team would have done a better job than she could do. Foreman or Thirteen, hardened by years of getting 'detailed patient histories', as they had called their snooping and spying, would have made short shrift of Wilson's security measures.

"Okay, I'm coming the day after tomorrow." With that the line went dead.


	8. Unwanted Growths

**A/N: **A big thanks to everyone who is reading and leaving comments.

* * *

The scans were clear high-definition ones, done by expert technicians with state-of-the-art equipment. The biopsy results were unequivocal. The entire file was worth both the money he'd laid out for it and the hassle of dealing with Lisa's pain-in-the-ass PI.

"You've got stage II thymoma," Pete said to Wilson by way of greeting, dropping the file on the coffee table and lowering himself onto the couch beside Wilson.

Wilson looked up from his book. "You've got a problem with the concept of privacy."

"You've consulted with three specialists and they all suggested resection followed by radiation."

"You're confusing cancer with early-onset Alzheimer's. I'm quite capable of recalling what the specialists with whom I consulted told me. You don't need to repeat it."

"You don't seem to be capable of acting on their advice. Why aren't you doing something about your thymoma?"

"_My_ thymoma, _my_ choice. That's a concept that you, of all people, should be able to comprehend."

"Your 'choice'," Pete said with heavy emphasis, "is misinformed and stupid. And by 'stupid' I mean suicidal."

Wilson tossed his book onto the coffee table. Pete noted with detached surprise that it was a biker's guide – not the kind of book you'd expect Lisa to own or Wilson to read.

"I happen to be an oncologist in my own right," Wilson said, "and I know _exactly_ what I'm doing. That may 'only' be a stage II thymoma, but it's a type B3 …"

Pete widened his eyes, waving his hands hysterically. "Oooooh, Type B3! Now I'm _really_ scared!" That wasn't too far away from the truth: B3 was bad news. It meant that Wilson needed to swing into action fast if he wanted to get it under control.

For a moment Wilson looked annoyed, but then he shrugged. "Deal with it your way and I'll deal with it in mine."

"How is doing nothing 'dealing with it'?" Pete yelled.

"I _am_ doing something," Wilson said. He picked up his book and opened it again, pointedly ignoring Pete.

Pete squinted at the title. "_Great American Motorcycle Tours_. Is this the 586th of the 1001 Must-Reads Before You Die? Wow, I'm impressed: you're going to spend the last months of your life on Lisa's couch, reading."

Wilson looked smug. "No, I'm going to spend the last months of my life riding a motorbike instead of lying in a sterile neon-lit hospital puking my guts out while bored, bleary-eyed nurses change my sheets and empty my bedpan. I've sent in my resignation and I'm taking unpaid leave until I'm officially released from my contract, so there's nothing to stop me from leaving." He turned a page and pretended to be immersed in a description of the route from Gettysburg to Fredericksburg.

Nonplussed, Pete scratched his eyebrow with a thumbnail. "You … can ride a bike?"

Wilson didn't look up. "It can't be too difficult – you did it with a gimp leg."

"Nice," Pete drawled.

Wilson relented somewhat. "I've had a few lessons," he admitted. "Besides, it wouldn't matter much if I ended up wrapped around a telegraph pole."

"So that's your great plan: committing suicide under the pretext of working your way through a bucket list."

"No, that's what _your_ plan would be if you were in my place. My plan is simply to spend my last months with as much dignity as possible."

"There _is_ no dignity in death!"

"I knew you'd say that," Wilson said with his 'I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself' expression. "But you're wrong."

He continued in a low voice, "I've seen this often enough: patients going through round after round of chemo, first the light fire, then the heavy artillery, and finally the palliative stuff. By the time they accepted that they were going to die, it was too late to live anymore. And God help me, I was the idiot who advised them to go that way. All their energy went into fighting the cancer instead of going along with it. _I'm_ going to have fun for as long as I can."

"And then?"

"And then the plan for palliative care that I've drawn up takes effect. It's at the back of the file."

Pete leafed to the last page. It was a DNR. He slammed the file shut and tapped it thoughtfully.

"Have you thought about Lisa and the squirt? They're kinda dependent on you."

Wilson dog-eared his page and closed the book. "Nice try, but as you know quite well, they'll be better off without me. Cuddy doesn't even trust me to babysit Rachel anymore."

"That's because you drink, not because you have cancer. You can quit the booze; you've done it before." Like he'd stopped taking Vicodin. And then started again. And stopped. And started again. And parked a car in Lisa's house.

Wilson didn't seem convinced either. "I think _you_ were the one who said that addicts don't change. I'll always be an addict, even when I'm sober. I'm an additional responsibility for Cuddy, just like Rachel is. Only difference is, I'll never outgrow my neediness."

Neediness could be combatted with more neediness. "What about me?" Pete asked.

"What _about_ you?" Wilson asked right back.

"What if _I_ need you?"

"You don't. You've got a job, …"

"Been fired." Might as well use the humiliating fact to gain leverage.

That stopped Wilson short, but only for a moment. He continued staunchly, "You'll get a new one. You have friends, …"

"Acquaintances," Pete corrected. He'd be the last to admit it, but he'd taken to friendship with Wilson like a fish to water. It was a benchmark against which his other 'friends' fell short.

"Whatever. From your perspective you've known them for longer than you've known me. You'll do fine with them."

"And that's for _you_ to decide?"

Wilson sat up and twisted to face House. "Actually, it is. It certainly isn't for you to decide that I have to stay alive to suit your personal agenda. I'm not some … piece of real estate that you can dispose of as you please."

Wilson was pissed, that was for sure. The question was why. What clues had he given? 'Real estate' – what did that mean? Pete didn't own any real estate – he'd had an apartment in Princeton, but it had been sold in order to cover the costs of the procedure that had wiped his memory.

Ah, there it was! He'd disposed of their friendship along with his memory and his apartment.

"You're still mad at me for nuking my hippocampus, leaving you here alone," he stated.

Wilson enunciated clearly, as though talking to a child. "No, House, I'm _not_ mad at you for nearly killing yourself. I'm mad at you for nearly killing me!"

This was ridiculous. It reminded Pete of those notes in his Mayfield case file about Wilson's dead girlfriend (amantadine poisoning after her kidneys got trashed in a bus accident). Then, Wilson had also blamed him for something that hadn't been his fault, not according to _logical_ criteria.

Fortunately he'd read the court files dealing with the car crash and knew what had happened. "I didn't 'nearly kill' you. You fell and sprained your wrist."

Wilson jumped up and stared down at Pete. "That's not _quite_ what happened!" he said, his voice tense.

Tons of subtext there, of the kind that Pete disliked immensely. People tended to deliver revelations about his past – those bits that he preferred not to know about – in that tone of voice, tinged with disapproval. "What, I was trying to kill you, not Lisa?" he joked rather lamely.

"You were driving straight at that tree, so I stepped in front of it. But you just kept on coming. You didn't slow down one bit!"

Okay, that was a legitimate grudge, nearly being turned into roadkill, but it didn't mean that he'd tried to _kill_ Wilson. From what he'd heard about that time, Wilson had been supportive (even if his efforts had been unappreciated and his advice largely spurned), so it was unlikely that he'd been the target.

"I imagine I was hoping you'd jump out of the way if I didn't swerve. And you did, so I was right. Furthermore, I _did_ swerve – into Lisa's house," he added rather bitterly. "So what's your point?"

"My point," Wilson said, pointing an unsteady finger at Pete, "is that if I'd jumped in the other direction, the one you swerved into, you'd have run me over and I'd be dead now."

"But you didn't. You're going to let the cancer to kill you because you believe your escape four years ago was somehow fortuitous, cheating the gods?" Pete had the disconcerting feeling that he'd lost the plot.

"No, House, I'm going to let the cancer kill me because I won't subject myself to months of futile suffering for the sake of someone who pointed his car straight at me with no concern for the consequences. If you'd tried to kill me, then maybe I could have forgiven you, because murderous intentions indicate some level of emotion. But it wasn't that; you simply didn't _care_ whether you killed me or not. You didn't care about what was happening to me at that moment."

"I swerved to avoid you," Pete said desperately. "You said so yourself."

"I don't know whether you swerved to avoid me or whether you got cold feet at the last moment and were avoiding a collision with the tree. But if you'd been concerned for my safety, you would have braked or changed course much earlier. You didn't. You didn't care about me. Why should I care what _your_ future looks like?"

Five years later, and Wilson had to bring it up now of all times? Couldn't he have fought this out earlier, when his health wasn't a consideration? "Isn't it a bit late to take a stand on this?"

Wilson rubbed his hand wearily over his face. "It has always been too late to take a stand, but it's never too late to make decisions for my own good instead of yours. You're on your own, House."

Wilson's cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, squinted at the display and frowned, but took the call nonetheless, turning slightly away from Pete as though that gave him more privacy. It didn't: if anything, it made Pete all the more eager to listen in.

"Hello, Amy," Wilson said.

A woman. A love interest? Probably not – Wilson's tone was calm and soothing, without the upward lilt that indicated an adrenaline surge. Were he still an active physician, then Amy could be a patient. She could, of course, be a neighbour who'd asked for his medical opinion.

"Yes. …. Yes." Wilson listened, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Well – that's _good_ news, isn't it?" he finally said, his voice exuding cheer, his face slightly puzzled.

A neighbour who'd found out she didn't have cancer and was cut up about it? Sure, why not? Full-blown Munchhausen's was fairly rare, but there were gradations – people who didn't actively make themselves sick, but who craved the attention that being sick brought them.

"Yes, I know, it can be a bit of a downer. … Yes, I'm sorry, Amy, but maybe it's better this way." Wilson didn't look utterly convinced himself as he mouthed the last platitude. "But you're still young, and this really isn't the best way …. No, no! I'm not saying you were trying to …"

He looked hunted now, and he'd given up all pretence at privacy, pacing the living room as though it was a cage. "I just think it might be better if you found someone … Amy, you're a lovely young person; you're _sure_ to find someone …"

Amy, no matter how lovely, was clearly not in the habit of letting her conversation partners finish their sentences. Wilson seemed to have given up. He listened for a few minutes without commenting at all, other than a few _yesses_ and _hums_ to indicate that he was still listening. Then, finally, he said, "Yes, Amy. I'm very sorry. And thanks for letting me know. … No, I don't know. Maybe next week. … Have a good week. … Bye."

He flicked his phone shut and sank back onto the couch next to Pete, giving him a sideways glance.

"Someone not happy not to have cancer?" Pete asked casually.

Wilson harrumphed. "You could put it that way, if you equate cancer with unwanted growths in the body!" He leaned forward, picked up the remote control and switched on the television, flicking through the channels at a rate that precluded his actually seeing what was on the screen.

Pete did the differential on a growth in a woman that was not cancer, but nevertheless unwanted. "She was pregnant," he said, "and now she isn't."

Wilson found something stupid to watch – a documentary on the effects of globalisation on African rural life. "Wrong. She wasn't even pregnant." He swung his feet on the coffee table and stared at the screen in concentration.

This was a game two could play at. Pete swung his feet up too, crossing his ankles and leaning back comfortably.

_The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of native fish species in Lake Victoria. Its white fillets are exported all around the world, but the local population profits little._

Wilson's pensive expression, although suited to this depressing piece of information, was hardly caused by the plight of the indigenous population on the shores of Lake Victoria. After a few aerial shots of fish processing plants accompanied by dirge-like music, he finally broke.

"After I got back from England, I … There's this lab technician at work, Amy. She was having a rough time, like me … We ended up in bed, and I didn't take proper precautions." Wilson shrugged at the television. "It was stupid. Anyway, when I realised, I asked her to contact me if, you know, anything came of it."

"You mean, if you'd put a bun in her oven," Pete supplied helpfully.

Wilson raised his eyebrows. "If you want to put it that way." He tipped his head to watch a fish being gutted. The camera panned along the processing line in a factory, and then cut to a pile of waste festering in the sun. "I don't think I want to eat fish again."

"Not wanting to have sex again would be a healthier reaction."

"My _health_ is unlikely to be affected either way," Wilson pointed out. "It's not like I'd be around to raise a kid."

Pete tipped his head to acknowledge the point. "But Amy wouldn't have minded a positive outcome," he said.

Wilson rubbed his forehead. "Apparently not. She seems to think that once you've reached twenty-five, it's all downhill and your life is as good as over. Of course, I didn't tell her that I have cancer and won't be much of a father figure, but I doubt that it would make any difference."

"It explains why she didn't use contraception. It doesn't explain why _you_ didn't."

"I was upset. I wasn't thinking straight. … Okay, I was drunk!"

Pete said bitingly, "That was obvious from what you told me before: very young colleague making doe eyes at you with _I want you to be my baby daddy!_ printed across her forehead."

"It wasn't printed … She talked about her parents, her dad's death, her recent break-up. She never mentioned kids – at least, I don't think she did," Wilson said weakly.

"Or you have selective hearing." Pete scrunched up his mouth and frowned.

"You're saying I want a kid when I won't even be around to see it grow up?"

"How often have you 'forgotten' to use a condom, even when you were drunk?"

Wilson was silent.

Pete wagged a finger to rub in the point he'd scored. "We're hardwired to pass on our genes. Knowing that you could be dying, your subconscious decided to make a last-ditch attempt to ensure that James Evan Wilson's DNA will be preserved for posterity."

Wilson looked at him with a mixture of disgust and amusement. "That's the most selfish reason for having kids that I've ever heard – leaving my genes behind for others to deal with."

"There are no unselfish reasons for having kids," Pete mused. "It's always about yourself. Kids don't ask to be catapulted into this existence; all those millions of eggs and sperm that never partner up are probably a lot better off than their paired-off counterparts."

The documentary cut to a pile of perch roe being prepared in a French gourmet restaurant.

"You're grossing me out," Wilson remarked.

"Who, me? I just justified your little outing into sperm donation as an act of self-preservation rather than the manifestation of total stupidity that it was. … Sperm donation," he said thoughtfully. He swung his feet off the coffee table and got up. Something was festering at the back of his brain, and he couldn't access it with the television blaring in the background and Wilson being a total dumb-ass about babies.

… Babies …. Sperm … Gestation period. God, was there no tennis ball in this whole place? Probably not – it wasn't as though Rachel would ever play.

It was a blastocyst of an idea. He had everything he needed, although he couldn't recognise as yet what it was growing into. And he wasn't sure whether he had sufficient time to wait for this embryo to develop.

"When are you leaving?" he asked Wilson.

"As soon as I've finalised my travel itinerary and gotten myself equipped for the road."

"Have you got a bike?"

Wilson hesitated. "Not yet."

Pete smiled, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "You'll need advice, _expert_ advice. I know a place."


	9. Shopping for Trouble

House did indeed know a place for motorcycles just outside Princeton.

"You –- remember this place?" Wilson asked as they drew up outside it. He remembered it; they'd been there together some seven years earlier to replace a motorcycle that House had trashed.

House's mien as he examined the shop front was hesitant, his brows drawn together in concentration, his lips scrunched up. "Maybe … vaguely. I _think_ I've been here before …"

Wilson felt a tremor of hope run up his spine. "Really?" he said.

House looked at him, his lips quirking. "No." He reached into his backpack, drew out a motoring magazine and tossed it into Wilson's lap. It was folded open on a page with ads, one of which was circled.

"_NJ Motorcycles, Princeton_," Wilson read. "Ass!"

"Retrograde amnesia that lasts longer than half a year doesn't 'wear off' just like that," House pointed out.

"True, but there are new findings that DBS can produce vivid memories, so it may be possible to combat your amnesia."

House looked at him curiously. "Would you invite bedbugs back in after you've had your place fumigated and replaced all your furniture?"

Wilson was hard put to pinpoint the flaw in the metaphor. "I am who I am because of the events that shaped me and the memories that they left. I don't simply _like_macadamia nut pancakes. I can recall my grandmother making them, my mother making them, even _me_ making them on occasion," _and you eating them,_ he added silently. "It's the taste _plus_ all those memories that combine to form my present day experience of enjoying macadamia nut pancakes."

"I was a jerk before the electroconvulsive therapy; I'm a jerk now. Not remembering how I used to piss people off doesn't stop me from enjoying it now. I'm fine without my memories."

"How can you know?"

House shrugged and went inside. Wilson sighed, locked the car, and followed him. Seeing to which part of the display House was drifting Wilson said, "I'm looking for something for the next few months, not for a long-term investment for my money."

As though on cue, a salesman came up. "This model, sir, has 1000 cc, a 5.2 gallon fuel tank, and traction control. It also has cruise control and …"

"We need a beginner's motorcycle," House said without looking up from the model he was circling.

"New or used?"

"Used."

"Ah, then you might like to look over here, sir," the salesman said, moving over to cruisers that looked as though they came straight from the movie set of _Wild Hogs_.

Wilson longed to point out that there was a difference between midlife crisis and end-of-life closure, but House and the salesman were off on suspension, displacement, torque and heaven knew what, so he wandered off to look at leather jackets and helmets instead.

Black. Black would be appropriate. He'd look suitably rakish in black leather. And an open helmet: he wanted to feel the wind in his face. He'd get sunglasses to go with it and cultivate a manly stubble. And he'd visit that girl Melanie, the one he'd had a crush on in high school, and make her regret she'd gone to the prom with Kyle Calloway, that selfish bastard!

He'd chosen a jacket, pants and boots when House whistled at him.

"Wilson, you're testing those three." He pointed to three motorcycles that the salesman had pushed to the entrance of the shop, all of them cruisers.

Wilson swung himself onto the first one. House eyed him critically, checking not just his control of the vehicle, but also his posture. At House's gesture he moved on to the next one. When House was satisfied, he nodded to the salesman.

"He'll take the Honda Rebel. Now let's have the other one!"

The salesman wheeled out another motorcycle while House, who had come dressed in leather, grabbed the helmet Wilson had chosen and put it on.

"Why can't I try that one?" Wilson asked, pointing to House's motorcycle. It was what he'd envisioned when he'd pictured himself riding into the sunset: a sleek racy outline, front and rear fairings, a rake angle that had you crouching over the handlebars ready to lean into corners as you wound up mountain serpentines. The one House had picked for him from the selection the salesman had wheeled out looked tame in comparison.

"You ride this one, and your trip ends at the first corner you meet," House said. Relenting a little, he added, "If you want to ride with that tumour pressing on your lungs, you're going to need a fairly upright position. And you should be able to plant your feet solidly on the ground – you'll need the extra control when you have to stop suddenly because of a coughing bout."

When House put it like that, a motorcycle trip into the sunset didn't seem such a great idea after all.

House swung his prosthetic awkwardly over the saddle of the sports motorcycle.

"Are you sure …?" the salesman began.

In answer, House gunned the motor and spurted across the parking lot, the exhaust thrumming loudly. For all of ten wearying minutes he accelerated and braked, weaved in and out of parked cars, rode ever-tightening loops, until he finally came to a stop in front of Wilson and the sales guy.

"Can we go now, Evil Knievel?" Wilson asked. "I've got a motorcycle and you don't need one."

"You want me to ride pillion on yours?" House asked, leering. "Snuggling up to you from behind? Sweet! But on a 250 cc bike that's going to get uncomfortable pretty soon."

"You're –- coming with?"

"Sure," House said easily. "Can't miss this, can I? Wilson letting his hair down, going all Easy Rider on the unsuspecting populace of the Midwest!"

"Who says I want you to come?" Wilson said slowly.

House tipped his head to one side to consider Wilson the way he looked at interesting scans, shifting his weight to his remaining foot as he did so, causing the crotch rocket under him to list to the same side. "You let me come _here_ with you," he pointed out.

"Only because you know more about motorcycles than I do."

"You could have researched them yourself on the internet; in fact, you probably did. See, you _want_ me to go along because you're scared to go by yourself." Before Wilson could protest that he was no chicken, House added suggestively, "Besides, if you're nice to me, I'll let you ride my – bike."

Wilson threw up his hands, but he couldn't help smiling. "With such an incentive, who could refuse you?" he said.

"We're taking the motorcycles for a test ride," House told the salesman. "Take his credit card as security and get us another helmet."

Out on the roads? Wilson had imagined that he'd start off by turning rounds on an empty parking lot or chugging slowly down the streets of Germantown, taking things at his own pace with no one to witness his little wobbles of insecurity. Going on a ride with House would undoubtedly involve testing his limits and possibly exceeding them. But House was already on his bike revving impatiently, the salesman was giving him an encouraging wave, and there was no way he could back down without losing face completely, not after he'd told House that he was going on a road trip in order to have the time of his life. So he swung his leg over the saddle with a confidence that he didn't feel, plastered a smile onto his face and started the ignition. (Where on earth was the fuel gauge on this darn thing?)

"Stay behind me and do as I do!" House instructed before heading towards the exit of the parking lot.

_Sure!_ he thought, kicking into first gear, easing the clutch and twisting the grip of the throttle towards himself. The motorcycle lurched forward. He pulled hard on the clutch, mindful of his driving instructor's words: 'When in doubt, engage the clutch!' It was a good thing he'd taken a few lessons the past weeks, even though they weren't nearly enough to make him feel confident about controlling the roughly five hundred pounds bucking under his ass and just waiting to toss him into the next irrigation ditch.

The engine whined, but being disconnected, had no more effect on the motorcycle than Wilson's agitated thoughts. After a few harrowing seconds he had the it under control and was puttering slowly across the parking lot towards House. He applied a little more throttle and was relieved when the cruiser picked up speed, reaching a respectable pace by the time he caught up with House.

"You _do_ know how to switch gears, right?" House asked.

Wilson nodded, mortified.

House grinned diabolically. "Follow me!"

After half an hour, Wilson was just about ready to abandon the motorcycle and walk back to the car. It wasn't that House was taking particular pains to torture him. No, it was small-town traffic pure and simple: four way stops, traffic lights, left turns, right turns. The first right turn had him weaving into the opposite lane, which was luckily completely empty.

House stopped. "You know what would have happened if a car had come from the other direction?"

Yes, he knew. He didn't need to be reminded.

After a further fifteen minutes, House let him pull up and waved at him to drive ahead.

"How do I know where I'm supposed to go?" he asked, slightly panicky. If he messed this up, he'd land on the freeway among trucks and SUVs and commuters, all out to get him.

"Well, _I_ have no idea where we are, so if you don't either, we'll ride in circles till we run out of gas," House said shrugging.

Great! They were out in the open countryside by now, and he hadn't really paid any attention to their route, so busy had he been trying not to stall the motorcycle or lose sight of House. But he had a rough idea where they'd come from, so he turned around and tentatively accelerated to what he considered an adequate cruising speed.

Wilson had just come to the conclusion that motorcycles were fun after all when disaster struck. Everything had gone well on their way back to Princeton and they were approaching the last traffic light before the motorcycle shop when it switched from green to yellow. Wilson braked: he wasn't about to risk a left turn under the pressure of getting off the intersection before he was turned into roadkill by oncoming traffic. He felt rather than saw House overtake him and head out onto the intersection. House leaned into the turn, but he was too close to the curb, _far_ too close, and the rest happened so fast that Wilson only heard a scrunch as the sports motorcycle slid into a parked car.

He accelerated, drove through the red light, and turned left the way House had done, hoping that any oncoming traffic would brake. A horn blared. By the time he reached House he was going so fast that he couldn't stop next to him anymore. His bike came to a halt a few yards further on; he kicked the stand down, dismounted, and ran back to where House was slowly picking himself up.

"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly.

House flexed one leg and then the other, dusted down his leather jacket and his pants, which were quite badly scuffed on the side that had hit the ground, and grimaced.

"Seems okay," he said, though his voice was not quite as cocky as usual. Wilson walked over to House's motorcycle and picked it up. At first glance he couldn't see any damage to it. He pushed it up the curb out of the way and turned his attention to the car, a sleek silver Mercedes sedan.

_Oh, crap!_ A large dent graced the driver's door and the left back tire was flat. Totally flat. Undrive-ably flat. How had that happened with no visible damage to the machine?

"The tire is flat," he said to House. "Are you sure you're okay?"

House, who had sunk down on the curb, nodded.

"What about the prosthetic?" Wilson probed. Maybe something had come off and …

House examined that leg. The leather of his pants was somewhat scuffed, but the prosthetic itself seemed intact. "Must've been the foot rest," he said.

Wilson looked around. No owner was rushing out of an adjoining building to lynch them. In fact, no one was taking any notice of them at all. He walked into the cafe that adjoined the sidewalk.

"The car out there, the Mercedes, do you know to whom it belongs?" he asked the woman behind the counter.

She came out with him. "That's Phil's car," she said. "He's got his office on the second floor. Wait, I'll call him."

She walked to the edge of the sidewalk and leaned backwards. "Phil!" she hollered. A head popped out of a window on the second floor. "Come down! Someone's done somethin' to your car!"

After what seemed an infinite wait, an elderly gentleman in a suit and tie shuffled out onto the sidewalk. "What's with my car?" he asked with a look of mild enquiry.

"My friend, uh, crashed his motorcycle into it," Wilson said.

"Oh, dear!" Phil said. He looked at House, who was now cradling his head in his hands. "Is he okay? Should we call a doctor?"

"He's okay, and I am a doctor," Wilson said.

"Oh, dear!" Phil repeated. "Motorcycles are _so_ dangerous! My daughter is taking driving lessons, but I'd never let her get on a motorcycle." He looked at Wilson as though it was his fault that House was riding a motorcycle.

Wilson shoved the thought that if Amy had been pregnant he'd be about Phil's age when his kid got a driver's licence firmly out of his mind and concentrated on the matter at hand. "Your car," he reminded Phil.

"A few scratches don't matter as long as it still works," Phil said cheerfully. Then to House, "You shouldn't give up, though. After a crash, it's best to get right back on the motorcycle and keep going. Chicken out, and you'll regret it later."

When House raised his head and made as though to say something, Wilson quickly intervened. "I'm afraid the back tire is flat. No, the other one," he said, as Phil examined the intact tire on the right side of the car.

Phil went round to the other side. "Oh, sh–sh–sh." He drew out the sibilant, as though pondering what combination of vowels and consonants to add to it, and then settled for, "Shame! What a shame! But we should be happy that no one got hurt. Are you a beginner?" he asked House.

House didn't deign to reply. Wilson couldn't suppress a grin –- House classified as a beginner! This would provide mocking fodder for days.

"No, but he's starting again after a long time out," he said.

"Oh, dear! Well, I've read that most motorcycle accidents are caused by older men riding on machines that are too powerful for their abilities," Phil said.

House snorted.

Phil gave him a mild smile. "But however that may be, it makes no difference now." He contemplated the flat tire. "I suppose I can't drive the car like this?"

"No, definitely not," both Wilson and the woman from the cafe said.

"But I'm sure my insurance will cover the costs for the repair and the paint job," Wilson added.

"Well, yes, but I have a court hearing in Trenton in half an hour. How am I going to get there?"

"If you've got a spare in your trunk, I'm sure I could change it," Wilson said. He hadn't changed a tire in years, but how difficult could it be? He beckoned to House, who rose reluctantly from the curb.

But there was no spare tire in the trunk. "No idea where it went," Phil said with a fatalistic shrug.

"We could call a taxi," Wilson suggested.

Phil broke into a smile. "Now that would be lovely! In fact, I could do that myself. You boys have been through enough already."

But Wilson called a cab, and while they waited, he wrote his contact data and his insurance number down for Phil. "Let me know if there's a problem," he said.

"But hurry!" House muttered. "In a few months it'll be too late!"

Wilson gave House a dirty look. Turning back to Phil he said, "You've been very calm about all this. Not everyone would appreciate having their paint job ruined and their tire punctured."

"Young man," Phil said as the cab pulled up at the curb, "I'm a lawyer: criminal law. I deal with murder, mayhem, rape, and armed assault on a daily basis. Compared with that, a dented car is a breeze." He gave them both a friendly wave as the cab drove away.

"You heard him," Wilson said to House. "Straight back onto the motorcycle and off we go. No chickening out!"

House flipped him the bird.

The guy at NJ Motorcycles was less than happy when they came back at a very sedate pace (Wilson rather enjoyed biking with House when he was in a state of shocked stupor) and he saw the scratches on the fairings of the Kawasaki House had been riding.

"Are you buying it?" he asked.

"No," Wilson said before House could say anything. "We'll pay for the damage, but he's getting a cruiser, like me, with a displacement of 500 cc at the most."

There was a loaded silence while Wilson and the sales guy waited for House's reaction.

"And _he_ is paying for everything," House finally said, pointing his thumb at Wilson.

They made the remaining arrangements with the salesman: House haggled the price down by twenty per cent while Wilson selected saddle bags and arranged for the cruisers to be brought to Philly during the course of the week. He supposed he should be grateful for the turn of events – if House hadn't kissed the tarmac, he'd probably have insisted that they ride their motorcycles back to Philadelphia immediately.

* * *

Cuddy, spotting the two men slinking past the kitchen toting four large shopping bags, strode out to intercept them before they could reach the safety of the guest bedroom.

"What have you got there?"

Pete looked brazen enough to bluff it out, but Wilson flushed guiltily.

When she waved her hand at the bags with a twirl in an 'open up!' gesture Pete said, "Private stuff, not for ladies' eyes!" and winked at her broadly.

She turned to Wilson with her hands on her hips and predictably he folded. "It's motorcycle gear," he mumbled.

It took her a few moments to process the information. "Motorcycle gear? Have you gone crazy?"

"Why did you tell her?" Pete said. "Now she's gonna get her thong all in a twist!"

"You don't think she'll notice when we're both gone all of a sudden?" Wilson asked. Crossing his arms defensively he said to Cuddy, "I want to see a few places before I die."

"Can't you go by car?" He didn't answer. "Do you even have a motorcycle licence?"

"Pete knows someone who …"

"_Pete knows someone who knows someone,_" she mimicked. "Great! So your plan for avoiding cancer treatment in a hospital is getting admitted as roadkill instead."

"Why does everyone think _I'll_ crash the motorcycle?" Wilson asked plaintively.

Cuddy turned to Pete and poked a finger into his chest. "I'll hold _you_ responsible for his safety."

"Hey, it wasn't my idea!" Pete protested, taking half a step backwards and throwing up his hands.

"I'm aware of that. Something that stupid could only have come from the Mastermind of Idiotic Plans!" Cuddy said, tossing her head angrily at Wilson.

"'Mastermind of …'?" Wilson repeated. "I'm insulted. My plans are never idiotic." Unlike Pete, whose Puppy-dog Look of Innocence was marred by being obviously fake, Wilson's looked like the genuine thing, maybe because he believed in his own innocence.

"I can name at least twenty instances of totally crappy schemes," Cuddy said, a challenging gleam in her eyes.

Wilson unfolded his arms to waggle his fingers at her. "Fine, bring it on! I'm counting."

Pete leaned against the wall, grinning. "This is gonna be good!" he said.

"It sure is," Cuddy confirmed. "Twenty: The Chicken Bet."

"You … knew about that?" Wilson asked.

"Of _course _I knew about that. It was my job to know about things like that."

"That one wasn't too bad; it got House off your back."

"Do you have any idea what it cost me to have the entire tract disinfected without the story leaking to the board?" Obviously not. "Nineteen: Double dating with Sam."

Wilson didn't contest that one.

She was on a roll now. "Eighteen: The time we didn't tell him," she nodded at House, "that his patient was cured?" Wilson didn't contest that one either.

"Seventeen: Dragging me to his wedding in the hope that he'd chicken out at the last minute when he saw me there."

"I couldn't know that he'd be stubborn enough to go through with it," Wilson defended himself.

"I _told_ you that he's a stupid, pig-headed adolescent with a bad attitude."

"Hey, I have feelings!" Pete interposed.

"Why am _I_ getting blamed for _his_ attitude?" Wilson complained.

"I'm not blaming you for his attitude; I'm blaming you for not taking it into account. Sixteen: The deal with Tritter."

"Shit, yes," Wilson muttered. "Talk of stupid, pig-headed idiots."

"Absolutely!" Cuddy said, looking at him pointedly. "Fifteen, …"

"Okay, okay," Wilson interrupted. "I get the point. You can stop. Can we go now?"

"You're leaving _now_?"

"No, we're leaving in about a week," Wilson said. "But I want to stow the gear in the guest room." He picked up three of the bags, leaving one for Pete. You would think Pete was the one with cancer, but ingrained habits were difficult to eradicate.

Cuddy turned to Pete as soon as she was sure that Wilson wouldn't hear them. "Wilson is being an idiot."

"Agreed."

"He needs treatment."

"Also agreed."

"Treatment which he won't be getting if you whisk him off to the ass end of nowhere, where you'll have so much fun together that he'll forget all about his imminent death." She leaned back, arms folded, her point made.

Pete imitated her posture. "Treatment which he won't be getting if I let him go off by himself to the ass end of nowhere to mope and come to the conclusion that life really isn't worth living."

She considered this. Pete had a point. Besides, Wilson was undoubtedly safer in Pete's company. "But don't you think he may have been testing the waters? If you hadn't agreed to go along, he might have given up his plan."

Pete blew air from one cheek to the other. "Wilson kept very few of my clothes when he put my stuff in storage, but he kept my motorcycle gear, along with the baby grand and the couch."

"So?" She wished he'd get to the point.

"So, for Wilson, motorcycling is a part of me the way playing the piano is." He tugged at his lip in thought. "You're playing tennis with your boss and he lobs a ball high over the net. What does he expect you to do?"

Now he was dangling one of his darn sports metaphors in her face, and if she wanted to figure out what was going on, she'd have to bite. "Smash it back?"

"Exactly! If you don't do that, he'll know you're not interested in winning the game, but in brown-nosing him. Wilson isn't testing the waters, he's testing me. He lobbed a high ball at me. If I'd lobbed it back, he'd have known I'm not interested in winning the game."

He was making her head ache. "And what's the game?"

"Keeping Wilson alive."

* * *

It took Wilson three weeks to get his life sorted; Pete, on the other hand, needed only one phone call. When Cuddy pulled him aside and asked him what he was going to live off now that he had no job, he raised an eyebrow and said, "Duh, Wilson of course! He's got quite a stash, and a deadline on spending it. Hah, see what I did there?"

Cuddy was not amused, but let it pass. "And then?"

"I'm still a lecturer at Oxford University." He must have sensed her doubts, because he added, "They're ridiculously generous and they don't seem to care much when I hold the lectures or how, for that matter. I have a nasty suspicion that they're more interested in the fickle fame attached to my name than in my unsurpassed teaching abilities." He managed to look deeply wounded at the superficiality of the organisation that was paying him a substantial salary for doing nothing.

"I wonder why," Cuddy muttered.

She had to admit that both men looked annoyingly hot in their motorcycle gear. Wilson had stopped shaving regularly since the day they'd gone on their purveying excursion. In his black leather jacket, a stylish pair of sunglasses perched on his nose, he looked dangerously rakish. Where had steady, solid, comforting Wilson gone? Pete, for his part, looked much as usual and coolly amused at Wilson's transformation.

Still, it wouldn't do for them to sense the pang in her heart as she surveyed them, possibly seeing Wilson for the last time with a genuine smile on his face. So she said as bossily as she could, "You will call me every day!"

"We're throwing our cells into the first river we cross," Pete said.

"We'll call you once a week," Wilson offered as a compromise.

Cuddy narrowed her eyes at him. "Every second day."

"Twice a week," Wilson offered.

"Done."

She never got to find out whether Wilson would have kept his promise in the long run, because their motorcycles roared down her peaceful street again a bare ten days later. She purposely ignored the sound, deciding that wishful thinking wasn't going to bring her two guys back any sooner, but when her door opened (Wilson had a spare key) and their bickering filled her hall, she scampered out in a most undignified manner to meet them, clasping Wilson in a warm hug while she looked questioningly, anxiously, at Pete. She'd known that Wilson couldn't last forever, not on a road trip, but she'd expected him to be good for two months at the very least. Wilson _looked_ no different from when he'd left ten days earlier, so why were they back?

"Amy phoned," Pete said cryptically.

"Who's Amy?" Cuddy asked.

"She's someone I know from work," Wilson said.

"And he doesn't mean in the literal sense. He got to know her in the biblical sense," Pete added.

While Wilson looked embarrassed, Pete was darkly jubilant. "Like Caesar, Wilson saw, conquered, and came – in Amy. So now there's a little Wilson in Amy." He scratched his chin. "You might, at a stretch, say that Wilson is colonising her like the Romans colonised Britain."

Placed strategically between Cuddy and Wilson, he smirked at Wilson and then, twisting on his heel to face Cuddy, gave her a warning glare.

Getting it, she smiled warmly at Wilson as though this – his becoming father – was a _good_ thing. "Congratulations, Wilson. How lovely!"

"I'm not really sure," Wilson said, flapping his hands.

"Of course it is! Rachel will _love_ having a cousin."

Pete, unseen by Wilson, gave her a small nod of approval.

Wilson looked gobsmacked. "We haven't talked yet about what we'll do. I don't even know whether she wants to keep it."

Pete rolled his eyes at that. Cuddy wondered what he knew about Amy that he was so sure she'd want to keep it.

"Then I suggest you discuss it with her," she said to Wilson. "Does she know you have cancer?"

"No," Wilson said.

"Yes," Pete said.

Cuddy and Wilson both stared at him.

Pete cleared his throat. "I _may_ have called her back later and mentioned the matter to her," he said, focusing on a spot above the mantelpiece.

Wilson looked as though he was about to have an apoplexy. "House, do you always have to interfere?"

Cuddy had no idea what Pete was up to, but he probably knew what he was doing. "Consider it a good thing," she advised Wilson. "This gives her more time to consider the implication of your condition when making a decision for or against the baby."

"Not to mention what a damper it would be if she was gushing about the parasite and you had to tell her, 'Sorry, I can't help with the dirty diapers because I'll be dead!' " Pete said as he stretched himself along the couch.

"It would be the truth," Wilson said.

"It doesn't have to be," Pete said, his gaze intense. "Maybe _you_ dig this Circle of Life thing – new life entering this world while the old one fades away – but single motherhood isn't all it's made out to be. Right, Lisa?"

"Goddam right," Cuddy agreed, trying to hide her amusement at Pete showing empathy with single parents. "You need to reconsider what you'll do – how you'll deal with your tumour – in view of the changed circumstances."

"Wait," Wilson said. "Wait! This –- doesn't change anything for me. This affects _Amy's_ life, not mine. If she chooses to terminate because she can't face single motherhood, then that's …," Wilson stopped to consider what he was about to say, his eyes closed and his hands chopping the air, "… sad, but it's her call."

Pete leaned back, crossing his ankles. "So it's okay for you to put a bun in her oven, but it only has consequences for her, not for you."

Wilson narrowed his eyes at Pete. "It _will_ have consequences for me. If Amy keeps the child, I'll change my will and leave everything to him or her – instead of you."

"That affects your lawyer and me, not you. Who gets your money after you die won't make any difference to you whatsoever. You're not going to be reclining on a fluffy white cloud, smilingly down benignly on your misbegotten offspring as it squanders its inheritance. You. Won't. Be. There."

"Maybe not, but I'll die easy knowing that my child is taken care of."

When Pete made to open his mouth again, Cuddy interfered. "Pete, shut up!" Even though what he said was logical, the way he said it was guaranteed to put Wilson's back up. This would end with Wilson refusing treatment just to make a point.

Cuddy turned to Wilson. "You got Amy pregnant. You've put her in a position where she has to make a decision with long-term consequences, whether she wants to or not."

"If she terminates, it doesn't have to be long-term," Wilson said weakly, maybe sensing where Cuddy was going.

"_You_ can't know whether terminating won't affect her as much as keeping the child would. _You_ don't get to decide how she deals with it," Cuddy pointed out ruthlessly. "The least you can do is make whatever route she decides to go down more acceptable. You had all the fun; don't think you can squirm your way out of the consequences of your actions. Leaving her your money after you die? A great-uncle she has never met in her life might do as much. Amy needs you, not your money!"

Pete's little smile told her that she'd just passed 'Manipulation 101'.


	10. Treatment Plan

Wilson the friend was amusing; Wilson the oncologist was competent; Wilson the patient was a massive pain in the ass.

Pete couldn't fault Amy. She did her redoubtable best to draw Wilson into her web of neediness by insisting on keeping the child and making it clear that she wanted Wilson involved, to the point that Lisa, who had accompanied Wilson to New York to meet up with her ('No, Pete, you are _not_ going. You'll say something terribly insensitive that'll make Amy run for the hills. I'll go with him to make sure he doesn't end the day in a bar!'), voiced her fear that Amy's sole aim in getting pregnant was to become Mrs Wilson IV.

"So?" Pete said.

"He's twenty-five years older than she is and he has been married three times already. She must be insane to consider him a desirable candidate for matrimony!"

"Maybe she isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but people who have unprotected sex generally aren't. Again, why should this bother us?"

"It's a recipe for disaster. Should we be encouraging this?" She bit her lower lip, as she always did when something made her moral compass spin wildly on its axis. "They'll be divorced in no time at all."

"If she doesn't reel him in, Wilson will be _dead_ in no time at all. What's one more divorce in the greater scope of things?"

No matter what Amy's intentions were, her act should have sufficed to activate Wilson's innate protective instincts and make him agree to treatment, and it did – sort of. He agreed to get his medical state reassessed –- Lisa promptly bumped him to the top of the radiology waiting list at Philadelphia Central, so his scans were done in a matter of hours –- and to consult a specialist. Oh, and he tried to curb his drinking, for all _that_ was worth. (Basically it meant that Pete wasn't allowed to bring any beer, let alone scotch, to Lisa's place so as not to 'tempt' Wilson, and that he was supposed to stop Wilson from sneaking out to bars when Lisa wasn't around.)

That was, unfortunately, the sum total of the concessions Wilson was prepared to make. _Taking_ the specialist's (or anyone else's) advice was not part of his plan, as became apparent when he got back from the hospital.

"It's not going to be possible to perform a total resection," Wilson said, dumping his file on the coffee table when he returned from his consult with Philadelphia Central's head of oncology (who had been only too happy to fit Wilson into his tight schedule at no notice whatsoever when he heard that Wilson was not only a colleague of some renown, but also the interim dean's close friend). "I'd need several rounds of chemo to make resection a viable option at all, and even then, chances are that they won't get all of it, which means radiation afterwards. Statistically, thymic carcinoma patients don't show long-term benefit from subtotal resection or from adjuvant chemo or radiation. So, I'm better off not getting adjuvant treatment or surgery, because it won't improve my chances of surviving. It would merely keep me cooped up in hospital or at home, recovering from chemo or managing the side effects."

"_Statistically_ thymic carcinoma patients may not benefit from partial resection or adjuvant treatment, but that doesn't mean _you_ won't," Pete said. He scrunched up his face in thought. "What study is that and what was the sample size?"

Wilson didn't answer.

Pete pounced on the loophole. "Too small to be reliable, huh?"

Wilson folded his arms. "If I get treatment, I'll spend the next months praying to the porcelain god, and my immune system will be so compromised that hanging around an infant won't be an option. (That's assuming that I'll be fit enough to travel up to New York to see him.) Net result: months of suffering, separated from the kid I'm doing it all for, and in the end, I'll probably die anyway. No, I'm better off staying away from chemo and all the rest of it, and spending whatever time remains with my kid."

His logic was clearly faulty, but invoking the kid worked like a blinding spell on Lisa, whose resolve to bully Wilson into medical sense promptly crumbled. That had probably been Wilson's intention all along, and he reinforced the effect by adding a few more tear-jerk lines to the effect that he'd had a good life and that he'd die happy if he could only witness his brat's first few months.

"Fat lot of good that's going to do the kid!" Pete muttered when Wilson went off to phone Amy, presumably to get an update on her pregnancy. At Lisa's eye roll he elucidated, "Wilson may feel good about burping a little panty pooper who can't contradict him, but the kid won't remember him once he's dead. He'll leave no fucking trace in Mini-Jim's life other than those thick eyebrows that will get the poor _schmuck_ teased all through school."

Lisa tugged a lock of hair out of her face. "The first months are crucial for a child's later sense of security and its ability to bond," she said.

"From which tabloid did you glean that piece of mumbo-jumbo?" Pete asked, knowing even as he did so that he'd regret challenging her over matters of parenting. Parents and religious nutters had no sense of proportion and very little critical reasoning.

"Rachel has always been, well, _clingy_, even before her accident. Her mother abandoned her right after she was born, and no one knows for how long she'd been alone before she was found. I think …,"

"_I think, I believe, I am convinced._ Those three verbs preface totally crappy science. Rachel," Pete said, unable to stop himself although disaster now lay at the tip of his tongue, "is clingy because you disappear for hours every day, when she wants you here with her."

"Are you saying I'm neglecting my kid?" Lisa asked, her voice rising.

"No, I'm saying that even kids have agendas."

"But you think she'd be happier if I were here with her when she comes home from school."

"Define 'happy'," Pete prevaricated, hoping to prevent a full-scale explosion.

"Don't evade! You're saying my child is unhappy because I'm not around enough!"

"That's not what I said," Pete defended himself, but Lisa hardly seemed to hear him. He'd badly underestimated her guilt about her long working hours and overestimated her confidence in her parenting abilities. Not his problem, he decided as he pitched himself into the fray. "Okay, she'd be happier if you were here all day. But she'd also be happier if you let her live off soda and candy."

"That's different," Lisa said. "Candy and soda lack nutrients and will rot her teeth. My presence here is not detrimental to her health, so if I make her unhappy by depriving her of it, then my behaviour is selfish."

How the hell had they got from Wilson's suicidal stupidity to Lisa's parenting skills?

"Does that mean I can have a soda?" a voice piped up from the doorway.

* * *

"Now what?" Lisa said, collapsing on the couch next to him after putting Rachel to bed.

"Nothing," he said, not taking his eyes from the TV screen as he stuffed a handful of chips into his mouth. How the hell had the Celtics managed to take the lead?

"You're gonna let him die?" she asked incredulously.

He deigned to turn towards her to look down his nose at her. "I thought you were all for respecting his wishes and letting him die a happy dad, freed from the responsibility of actually caring for the life he created."

"You were right, I was wrong, Wilson's being an idiot. Can we move on?" she said tersely, rolling her hand in illustration.

"We wait," he said, schooling his features into what he hoped was an expression of Zen patience.

"Wait?" she echoed him. "For what?"

"For him to consent to treatment."

"How exactly is scattering chips all over my couch going to make him do that?" she said, looking pointedly at the mess he was making.

He grabbed another large handful and crunched them with half-open mouth, scattering crumbs in a wide radius all around him. Lisa leaned over to pluck the bag from his hand and hold it out of his reach. He sighed.

"He's been on Zoloft again for ten days, and his mood's improving already. Another two or three days, and he'll be as reasonable as he's likely to get."

Her mood perked up immediately. "You got him to take his meds again?"

"Let's just say that I ensured that he takes them," he prevaricated. The enforced proximity of a road trip had one major advantage: they'd shared all meals, which had afforded him ample opportunity to slip Wilson's SSRIs into his over-sweetened morning coffee. If Wilson had been surprised at Pete's willingness to organise and pay for breakfast every morning, he hadn't shown it. The long hours spent out in the sun and the wind had done the rest – Wilson was considerably more upbeat than he'd been a fortnight ago.

Whatever comfort Lisa derived from his information suffered a set-back as the Celtics scored another two points against the Sixers, increasing their lead to a comfortable twelve points. "Three days, give or take, won't change him enough that he'll agree to a course of treatment that he considers hopeless at the moment," she said.

"It'll give me time to come up with an alternative," Pete said, switching channels. That game was going nowhere. "He doesn't want to run the marathon, so we'll have to find a 100-metre sprint he can enter for instead."

When Lisa looked at him blankly he huffed impatiently. "It'll have to be something that hits the tumour hard and fast, so he won't need several rounds of chemo before surgery."

"That's bound to be risky!"

"It can't get riskier than no treatment at all."

* * *

He spent the next few days emailing, phoning and cyber stalking the authors of the study that Wilson had cited, thanking his lucky stars that somewhere in his obscure past he'd learned Japanese, because their English wasn't exactly hot. They were scrupulously polite, they were sorry to hear that their colleague Dr Wilson was not well at all, they would be too happy to help in any way possible, but –- rescinding their findings and stating publicly that they'd made a huge mistake simply wasn't an option.

They could and did point him towards a number of clinical trials and alternative treatment options, and they sent him copies of every treatment regime they knew. He spent hours poring over medical journals, pharmaceutical reports and conference proceedings, open books and notebooks filled with jottings spread out around him. At night he'd sweep everything under the couch; in the morning he'd pull it all out again. It drove Lisa crazy, this encroachment on her living space, even though it had been her idea that he should stay at her place, right at the beginning when he'd come from the conference in Baltimore.

"You just want to lure me into your lair so you can have your wicked way with me when I'm drowsy and my defences are down!" he'd surmised only half jokingly as he'd scanned her face to read the true intention behind her unexpected offer.

She'd dealt up front with his suspicions. "Believe me, you're the last person I want camped in my apartment; your domestic skills leave much to be desired. But _someone_ needs to keep an eye on Wilson when I'm at work, because otherwise he'll drink, and when he's drunk he's completely unreasonable."

The set-up had worked, sort of, before they'd left on their bike trip, probably because the knowledge that it was a temporary arrangement had made it endurable for Lisa. (Pete suspected that she made a notch in her bedpost for every day that she refrained from murdering him.) But now that he was there interminably, his belongings seeped insidiously into every corner of the apartment. Lisa had found his dirty laundry in Rachel's room, his porn DVDs stashed in the bathroom among her sanitary napkins (he'd thought it a fitting place – her underwear drawer, although more apt, had the disadvantage of not being accessible at night), and his beer hidden behind her books on interior design.

"Wilson will never find those cans; there's no way he'll look at wallpaper patterns and furniture," Pete pointed out, but Lisa, her eyebrows meeting her hair line, took the cans and disposed of the beer.

"You're right, he wouldn't pick any of those books for a bit of light reading," she said when he remonstrated loudly and vocally, "but he knows you well enough to figure out where you'd hide booze. There's a fifty percent chance at the very least that he'll find this lot."

His nightly perambulations through the apartment didn't help matters. Wilson and Rachel slept through it all in their respective rooms, Wilson not even waking up when he returned to the guest room in the early hours of the morning to lie down for a few hours on the trundle bed, but Lisa would pop out of her room like a jack-in-the-box whenever he went to the bathroom or into the kitchen (to raid the fridge) or out onto the small balcony off the kitchen for a smoke. It didn't take long till she had rings under her eyes that would have done a racoon proud.

"Do you have to prowl around all night?" she yelled at him when she caught him in the kitchen the third time within one night.

"I'm hungry!" he whined, scooping the last of Rachel's favourite chocolate chip ice-cream into his mouth.

Lisa frowned at the empty tub, but ignored the provocation. Instead she said, "Then take snacks with you into the living room, but: Stay. In. There!"

"How am I supposed to know in the evening what I'll want to eat at," he squinted at the kitchen clock, "three a.m.?" It was boredom rather than hunger that drove him, but she'd hardly appreciate the difference.

"Take a selection. I don't care. I need to sleep!"

"Use ear plugs."

"Then I won't hear Rachel if she needs help."

"For Chrissake, she's eight!" They were both yelling now.

"She's a _cripple_. At night, she's too disoriented to clamber into her wheelchair. If I don't assist her, she falls out of bed or gets stuck in the doorway."

"I can't sleep when you shout like that!" They whirled round to find Rachel glowering at them from the kitchen doorway. "And 'cripple' isn't a nice word to use. _And_," she added haughtily, turning her wheelchair to depart, "I can get into my wheelchair by myself whenever I want to!"

He broke the awkward silence by saying, "See? You don't need to play Martyr Mom for her."

Lisa strode out of the kitchen after Rachel, not even dignifying her exit with a parting shot.

* * *

Lisa phoned him the next day at lunchtime. "Wilson has agreed to see Nolan, and Nolan can fit him in this afternoon. Will you take him there?"

"Last I checked, Wilson had a valid licence and a car."

"Sessions with Nolan upset him. I don't want him alone afterwards while he processes."

Had she been corporeally present he'd have treated her to his _brow-furrowed-in-earnest-contemplation_ look before shooting her down. The verbal version would have to suffice. "Hmm, let me see … Bit busy here –- there's a Columbo re-run in half an hour."

There were a few people in Europe whom he still had to contact, and daylight was fading fast there. Phoning them with Wilson sitting in the car next to him so as to discuss treatment options to which Wilson hadn't consented as yet didn't seem like a good plan. Besides, the drinking that Wilson was indulging in at the moment was controlled enough that it wouldn't affect his treatment (once he consented), and as long as that was the case he could drink for all that Pete cared. That was Wilson's life choice, not Pete's problem.

"Fine!" Lisa bit out at the other end. "_I'll_ take him."

If she could make the time, why ask him in the first place? The answer came a moment later.

"Can you drop Rachel off at her friend's birthday party?" Aware of his reluctance she added, "You don't have to stay there or pick her up afterwards. I'll swing by with Wilson on our way back from Mayfield."

That shouldn't cost him more than half an hour, forty minutes max. "Okay. Where do I need to take her?"

"The invitation is pinned to the fridge. Address and telephone number are noted inside."

When Rachel got home from school he was trying to persuade a dim-witted German nurse to give him her boss's home number. "_Ja, ich weiß, dass es in Deutschland nach Mitternacht ist, aber es ist_ … urgent … _dringend!_"

"Where's mom?" Rachel asked.

"Gone," he replied shortly. Rachel withdrew wordlessly to her room.

When he finally got hold of the person he wanted to talk to, a rather sleepy researcher in charge of a clinical study at the teaching hospital in Heidelberg, Rachel popped into the living room again.

"You can't watch TV now," he said without waiting to hear what she wanted.

"When's mom coming back?" she asked.

He glanced at the clock. "Six-ish. Now shut up!" He turned back to his phone call. "Octreotide? What dosage?"

"Who's taking me to Chiara's birthday?"

"And the prednisone? … What happens if one increases the dosage? … Okay. Can you send me treatment plans? … Have you tried combining cyclophosphamide or cisplatin with the prednisone? … Yes, I _know_ it's risky. … Can you give me their phone number?"

Two phone calls and four emails later he finally remembered Rachel. By that time, according to the invitation, the birthday party had been under way for over two hours. Not worth the bother anymore, he decided, and phoned the Cancer Institute at Stanford University instead. Wilson would be happy to drive Rachel to all the birthday parties she wanted if he survived this.

* * *

Lisa was livid. "You _said_ you'd take her!"

"I lied." He hadn't meant to –- he'd honestly meant to drop Rachel off at that insipid party of hers –- but his good intentions weren't worth the effort it took to voice them. For all the good it had done Rachel, he might as well have lied intentionally.

"Why? _Why?_"

He supposed he could tell her about his phone calls, but then, what difference did it make? So he shrugged with a show of indifference.

She threw her hands up. "If you'd just said you weren't going to do it, I'd have made other arrangements."

"Why didn't you? You know how I am."

"Because I was busy juggling two jobs and Wilson's appointment, and because I was benighted enough to believe that you could manage a simple domestic chore!"

That kindled his suspicions. "What, you dumped her on me to test my domesticity? To see whether I'd make a good dad for your orphan?" He glowered down at her. "I won't. I'm not the guy you're looking for."

A finger poked into his chest. "News flash, Gregory House! I wasn't looking for a mate for life. I was merely trying to keep things simple. I was hoping that I could ask a guy –- an _adult_ –- who's living in my household and eating my food to do me a simple favour, instead of having to phone round friends, neighbours and babysitters to find someone who can do it at short notice!"

Her calling him 'House' was a sure sign that he'd gone too far. He scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. "She'll survive. Life is full of birthday parties we can't attend."

"This," Lisa hissed at him, "isn't about a stupid birthday party. This is about me telling Rachel she could go, and then she couldn't. She's holed up in her room crying her heart out, because she believes I didn't care enough to make it happen. Do you know how many parties she has to forgo or watch from the sidelines because the parents organise some 'fun activity' that Rachel can't participate in? Last year her 'best friend' went caving on her birthday, fricking _caving_! There was no way Rachel could go. And now, _finally_, there's a party that's 'wheelchair accessible', and _you_ couldn't …"

"You're getting what I did (or didn't do) mixed up in your mind with the suckotage of her life as a cripple," he couldn't help pointing out. "Those are two completely different things."

She rubbed her forehead tiredly with the heel of her hand as she gazed at Rachel's closed door. "Maybe. Maybe they are for you. But they aren't for Rachel."


End file.
